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THE  LIBRARY 

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o 


TKICOTRIN 


THE  STORY  OF  A  WAIF  AND  STRAY. 


BY 


"OUID  A," 


AUTHOR  OF  "STRATHMORE,"  "  CHANDOS,"  "iDALIA,' 
"UNDER  TWO  FLAGS,"  ETC. 


"  Better  an  outlaw  than  not  free." — Jean  Paul. 

"  Scepterless,  free,  uncircumscribed 
.  .  .  .  unclassed,  tribeless,  nationless, 
Exempt  from  awo,  worship,  degree,  the  king 
Over  himself." — SlielUy. 


PHILADELPHIA : 

J.    B.    LIPPINCOTT    &    CO. 
1869. 


f  y 


DEDICATED 

TO 


The   American    People, 


CORDIAL  ACKNOWLEDGMENT  OF  THEIR  RECEPTION  OF  MY  WORKS: 


THOSE  MEN  AMONG  THEM,  BOTH  OF  NORTH  AND  SOUTH, 


WHOSE   CHARACTERS   I    HONOR, 


.AND   WHOSE 


FRIENDSHIP  HONORS  ME. 


785543 


TRICOTRIN, 

THE   STORY  OF  A  WAIF  AND   STRAY. 


CHAPTER  I. 


It  was  autumn ;  a  rich  golden  autumn  of  France,  with 
the  glow  of  burning  sunsets,  and  the  scarlet  pomp  of  red- 
dened woods,  and  the  purple  and  the  yellow  of  grapes 
gathered  for  the  wine-press,  and  the  luscious  dreamy 
odor  of  overripened  fruits  crushed,  by  careless  passing 
feet,  upon  the  orchard-mosses.  Afar  off,  in  the  full  noon- 
day, the  winding  road  was  white  and  hot  with  dust;  but 
here  in  a  nook  of  forest  land,  in  a  dell  of  leafy  growth  be- 
tween the  vineyards  which  encompassed  it,  the  air  was 
cool  and  the  sunlight  broken  with  shade,  while,  through 
its  stillness  where  the  boughs  threw  the  shadow  darkest, 
a  little  torrent  leapt  and  splashed,  making  music  as  it 
went,  and  washing  round  the  base  of  an  old  ivy-grown 
stone  tower  that  had  fallen  to  ruin  in  the  midst  of  its 
green  nest. 

There  was  no  sound  except  one,  beside  that  of  the 
bright  tumbling  stream,  though  now  and  then  there  came 
in  from  the  distance  the  ring  of  a  convent-clock's  bells, 
or  the  laugh  of  a  young  girl  at  work  among  the  vims; 
— no  sound  except  o«e,  and  that  was  the  quick,  sharp, 
gleeful  crack  of  nuts  in  a  monkey's  teeth.  There  were 
squirrels  by  the  score  there  in  that  solitary  place  who  had 
right,  hereditary  and  indisputable  they  would  have  said, 
to  all  the  nuts  that  the  boughs  bore  and  the  grasses  hid; 
but  Mistigri  was  no  recognizer  of  rights  divine;  she  loved 
nuts  and  cared  little  how  she  go1  them,  and  she  sal  aloft 
in  her  glory,  or  swung  herself  from  twig  to  twig,  crush- 
ing and  eating  and  flinging  the  shells  away  with  all  that 

1*  (5) 


6  TRICOTRIN, 

gleeful  self-satisfaction  of  which  a  little  black  monkey  is 
to  the  full  as  capable,  after  successful  piracy,  as  any  con- 
quering sovereign. 

"Mistigri,  Mistigri!"  said  her  companion,  surveying 
her,  "  who  could  doubt  your  human-affinity  who  once  had 
seen  you  pilfer  ?  Monkey  stows  away  her  stolen  goods 
in  a  visible  pouch  unblushingly ;  man  smuggles  his  away 
unknown  in  the  guise  of  'profit'  or  'percentage,'  'com- 
merce' or  'annexation' — the  natural  advancement  of 
civilization  on  the  simple  and  normal  thieving.  Increased 
cranium,  increased  caution;  that's  all  the  difference,  eh, 
Mistigri?" 

Mistigri  cocked  her  head  on  one  side,  but  would  not 
waste  time  in  replying :  her  little  shiny  black  mouth  was 
full  of  good  kernels. 

"  Why  talk  when  you  can  take  ?"  she  would  have  asked. 

Her  owner  did  not  press  for  an  answer,  but  sung,  care- 
lessly, snatches  of  Goethe's  Millsong  and  of  Muller's  Whis- 
per, his  voice  chiming  in  with  the  bubble  of  the  stream 
while  he  took  at  intervals  his  noontide  meal,  classic  and 
uncostly,  of  Chasselas  grapes  and  a  big  brown  roll. 

He  was  a  man  of  some  forty  years,  dressed  in  a  linen 
blouse,  with  a  knapsack  as  worn  as  an  African  soldier's 
lying  at  his  feet,  unstrapped,  in  company  with  a  flask  of 
good  wine  and  a  Straduarius  fiddle.  He  himself  was 
seated  on  a  fallen  tree,  with  the  sun  breaking  through  the 
foliage  above  in  manifold  gleams  and  glories  that  touched 
the  turning  leaves  bright  red  as  fire,  and  fell  on  his  own 
head  when  he  tossed  it  up  to  fling  a  word  to  Mistigri  or 
to  catch  the  last  summer-song  of  a  blackbird.  It  was  a 
beauitful  Homeric  head ;  bold,  kingly,  careless,  noble,  with 
the  royalty  of  the  lion  in  its  gallant  poise,  and  the  chal- 
lenge of  the  eagle  in  its  upward  gesture ; — the  head  which 
an  artist  would  have  given  to  his  Hector,  or  his  Phoebus, 
or  his  God  Lyoeus.  The  features  were  beautiful  too,  in 
their  varied  mobile  eloquent  meanings ;  with  their  poet's 
brows,  their  reveler's  laugh,  their  soldier's  daring,  their 
student's  thought,  their  many  and  conflicting  utterances, 
whose  contradictions  made  one  unity — the  unity  of  genius. 

At  this  moment  there  was  only  the  enjoyment  of  a 
rich  and  sunny  nature,  in  an  idle  moment,  written  on  them 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  7 

as  he  ate  his  grapes  and  threw  fragments  of  wit  up  at 
Mistigri  where  she  was  perched  among  the  nut  boughs. 
But  the  brilliant  eyes,  so  blue  in  some  lights  so  black  in 
others,  had  the  luster  and  the  depths  of  infinite  meditation 
in  them ;  and  the  curling  lips  that  were  hidden  under  the 
fullness  of  their  beard,  had  the  delicate  fine  mockery  of  the 
satirist  blent  with  the  brighter,  franker  mirth  of  genial 
sympathies.  And  his  face  changed  as  he  cast  the  crumbs 
of  his  finished  meal  to  some  ducks  that  paddled  lower  down 
in  the  stream  where  it  grew  stiller  around  the  old  tower, 
and  took  up  his  Straduarius  from  the  ground  with  the 
touch  of  a  man  who  loves  the  thing  that  he  touches.  The 
song  of  the  water  that  had  made  the  melody  to  his  ban- 
quet was  in  his  brain ; — sweet,  wild,  entangled  sounds  that 
he  must  needs  reproduce,  with  the  self-same  fancy  that  a 
painter  must  catch  the  fleeting  hues  of  fair  scenes  that 
would  haunt  him  forever  unless  exorcised  thus. 

"Quiet,  Mistigri !"  he  said  softly,  and  the  monkey  sat 
still  on  her  hazel  bough,  eating  indeed,  but  noiselessly. 
He  listened  one  moment  more  to  the  stream,  then  drew 
the  bow  across  the  strings.  The  music  thrilled  out  upon 
the  silence,  catching  the  song  of  the  brook  in  harmony  as 
Goethe  caught  it  in  verse, — all  its  fresh  delicious  babble, 
all  its  rush  of  silvery  sound,  all  its  cool  and  soothing  mur- 
mur, all  its  pauses  of  deep  rest.  All  of  which  the  wood- 
land torrent  told — of  the  winds  that  had  tossed  the  boughs 
into  its  foam ;  of  the  women-faces  its  tranquil  pools  had 
mirrored;  of  the  blue  burden  of  forget-me-nots  and  the 
snowy  weight  of  lilies  it  had  borne  so  lovingly;  of  the 
sweet  familiar  idyls  it  had  seen  where  it  had  wound  its 
way  below  quaint  mill-house  walls  choked  up  with  ivy- 
growth  where  the  children  and  the  pigeons  paddled  with 
rosy  feet  upon  the  resting  wheel;  of  the  weary  sighs  that 
had  been  breathed  over  it  beneath  the  gray  old  convents 
where  it  heard  the  miserere  steal  in  with  its  own  ripple, 
and  looked  itself  a  thing  so  full  of  leaping  joy  and  dancing 
life  to  the.  sad  eves  of  yirl-recluses, — all  these  of  which  it 
told  the  music  told  again.  The  strings  were  touched  by 
an  artist's  hand,  and  all  that  duller  ears  heard,  but  dimly, 
in  the  splash  ami  surge  of  the  brown  fern-covered  stream, 
he  heard  in  marvelous  poems  and  translated  into  clearer 


8  TRICOTRIN, 

tongue — the  universal  tongue  which  has  no  country  and 
no  limit,  and  in  which  the  musician  speaks  alike  to  sove- 
reign and  to  savage. 

There  was  not  a  creature  there  to  hear,  save  the  yellow- 
winged  lorioles  and  Mistigri  who  was  absorbed  in  nuts; 
but  he  played  on  to  himself  an  hour  or  more  for  love  of  the 
theme  and  the  art,  and  an  old  peasant  woman,  going 
through  the  trees  at  some  yards  distance,  and  seeing  no- 
thing of  the  player  for  the  screen  of  leaves,  laughed  and 
stroked  the  hair  of  a  grandchild  who  clung  to  her  afraid  of 
the  magical  woodland-melodies  :  "  The  wood-elves,  little 
one?    Bah!  that  is  only  Trieotrin!" 

Her  feet,  brushing  the  fallen  leaves  with  pleasant  sound, 
soon  passed  away;  he  played  on  and  on,  such  poetry  as 
Bamboche  drew  from  his  violin,  whereat  Poussin  bowed 
his  head,  weeping  with  the  passion  of  women,  as  through 
his  tears  he  beheld  as  in  a  vision  the  "Et  in  Arcadia 
Ego." 

Then,  as  suddenly  as  he  had  begun,  Trieotrin  dropped 
the  bow  and  ceased ;  and  struck  a  light  and  smoked, — a 
great  Arab  pipe  of  some  carved  wood,  black  and  polished 
by  long  use.  On  the  silence  that  succeeded  there  came  a 
low  laugh  of  delight — the  laugh  of  a  very  young  child. 
He  looked  up  and  down  and  among  the  ferns  at  his  feet ; 
the  laughter  was  close  beside  him,  yet  he  could  see  no- 
thing. He  smoked  on  indifferently,  watching  the  bright 
eyes  of  the  birds  glancing  out  from  the  shadow;  then  the 
laugh  came  again;  close  at  his  side,  as  it  sounded;  he 
rose  and  pushed  aside  some  branches  and  looked  over  a 
broken  rail  behind  him  beyond  a  tangled  growth  of  reeds 
and  rushes. 

There  he  saw  what  had  aroused  him  from  his  smoke- 
silence:  more  than  half  hidden  under  the  moss  and  the 
broad  tufted  grasses,  stretching  her  hands  out  at  the  gor- 
geous butterflies  that  fluttered  above  her  head,  and  cov- 
ered with  the  wide  yellow  leaves  of  gourds  and  the  white 
fragrant  abundance  of  traveler's-joy,  was  the  child  whose 
laughter  he  had  heard.  A  child  between  two  and  three 
years  old,  her  face  warm  with  the  flush  of  past  sleep,  her 
eyes  smiling  against  the  light,  her  hair  lying  like  gold-dust 
on  the  moss,  her  small  fair  limbs  struggling  uncovered 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  9 

out  of  a  rough  red  cloak  that  alone  was  folded  about  her. 
The  scarlet  of  the  mantle,  the  whiteness  of  the  clematis, 
the  yellow  hues  of  the  wild  gourds,  the  color  of  the  winged 
insects,  the  head  of  the  child  rising  out  of  the  mosses,  and 
the  young  face  that  looked  like  a  moss-rosebud  just  un- 
closing, made  a  picture  in  their  own  way;  and  he  who 
passed  no  picture  by,  but  had  pictures  in  his  memory  sur- 
passing all  the  collected  art  of  galleries,  paused  to  survey 
it  with  his  arms  folded  on  the  rail. 

Its  solitude,  its  strangeness,  did  not  occur  to  him ;  he 
looked  at  it  as  at  some  painting  of  his  French  brethren's 
easels,  that  was  all.  But  the  child,  seeing  a  human  eye 
regard  her,  forgot  her  butterflies,  and  remembered  human 
wants ;  she  stretched  her  hands  to  him  instead  of  to  her 
playmates  of  the  air.  "J'aifaimP'1  she  cried,  with  a  plain- 
tive self-pity  ;  bread  would  be  better  than  the  butterflies. 

"Hungry;"'  he  answered,  addressing  her  as  he  was 
wont  to  do  Mistigri.  "  I  have  nothing  for  you.  Who 
brought  you  there,  you  Waif  and  Stray  ?  Put  down  there 
and  left,  to  get  rid  of  the  trouble  of  you,  apparently? 
Well, — D'Alembert  was  dropped  down  in  the  streets,  and 
found  a  foster-mother  in  a  milk-woman,  and  he  did  pretty 
well  afterward.  Perhaps  some  dainty  De  Tencin  brought 
you  likewise  into  the  world  and  has  hidden  you  like  a  bit 
of  smuggled  lace,  only  thinking  you  nothing  so  valuable. 
Is  it  so,  eh  ?" 

"J'aifaim!"  cried  the  child  afresh ;  all  her  history  was 
comprised  to  her  in  the  one  fact  that  she  wanted  bread, — 
as  it  is  comprised  to  a  mob. 

"  Catch,  then  1"  he  replied  to  the  cry,  dropping  into  her 
hands  from  where  he  leant  a  bunch  of  the  Chasselas  "rapes 
that  still  remained  in  his  pocket.  It  sufficed;  the  child 
was  not  so  much  pained  by  hunger  as  by  thirst,  though 
she  scarcely  knew  the  difference  between  her  own  sensa- 
tions; her  throat  was  dry,  and  the  grapes  were  all  she 
wanted.  He,  leaning  over  the  lichen-covered  rail,  watched 
her  while  she  enjoyed  them  one  by  one  She  was  a  very 
pretty  child,  the  prettier  for  that  rough  moss  covering, 
out  of  which  her  delicate  fair  shoulders  and  chest  rose  un- 
covered, while  the  breeze  blew  about  her  yellow  glossy 
curls. 


10  TRTCOTRIN, 

"Left  there  to  be  got  rid  of, — clearly,"  he  murmured 
to  her.  "Any  one  who  picks  you  up  will  do  you  the 
greatest  injury  possible.  Die  now  in  the  sunshine  among 
the  flowers;  you  will  never  have  such  another  chance 
of  a  poetical  and  picturesque  exit.  Who  was  ingenious 
enough  to  hide  you  there  ?  The  poor  shirt-stitcher  who 
was  at  her  last  sou  ? — or  Madame  la  Marquise  who  was 
at  her  last  scandal  ?  Was  it  Magdalene  who  has  to  wear 
sack-cloth  for  having  dared  to  sin  without  money  to  buy 
absolution  ? — or  Messalina  who  covers  ten  thousand  pois- 
onous passions  with  a  silver  embroidered  robe,  and  is 
only  discreetly  careful  of  'consequences?'  Which  was 
your  progenitrix  little  one,  eh  ?" 

To  this  question  so  closely  concerning  her,  the  Waif 
could  give  no  answer,  being  gifted  with  only  imperfect 
speech;  but,  happy  in  the  grapes,  she  laughed  up  in  his 
eyes  her  unspoken  thanks,  shaking  a  cluster  of  clematis 
above  her  head,  as  happy  in  her  couch  of  flowers  and 
moss  as  she  could  have  been  in  any  silver  cradle.  The 
question  concerned  her  in  nothing  yet:  the  bar  sinister 
could  not  stretch  across  the  sunny  blue  skies,  the  butter- 
flies flew  above  her  as  familiarly  as  above  the  brow  of  a 
child-queen,  and  the  white  flowers  did  not  wither  sooner 
in  bastard  than  in  legitimate  hands. 

"How  the  sun  shines  on  you,  as  if  you  were  a  prin- 
cess 1"  he  soliloquized  to  her.  "  Ah  !  Nature  is  a  terrible 
socialist;  what  republicans  she  would  make  of  men  if 
they  listened  to  her.  But  there  is  no  fear  for  them, — they 
are  not  fond  enough  of  her  school  1  You  look  very  com- 
fortably settled  here,  and  how  soon  you  will  get  life  over. 
You  are  very  fortunate.  You  will  suffer  a  little  bit, — 
paf!  what  of  that?  Everbody  suffers  that  little  bit  sooner 
or  later,  and  it  grows  sharper  the  longer  it  is  put  off. 
Suppose  you  were  picked  up  by  somebody  and  lived,  it 
would  be  very  bad  for  you.  You  would  be  a  lovely  wo- 
man, and  lovely  women  are  the  devil's  aides-de-camp. 
You  would  snare  men  in  your  yellow  hair,  and  steal  their 
substance  with  the  breath  of  your  lips,  and  dress  up  lying 
avarice  as  love,  and  make  a  miser's  greed  wear  the  smile 
of  a  cherub.  Ah!  that  you  would.  And  then  would 
come  age,  a  worse  thing  for  women  like  you  than  crime 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  \\ 

or  death ;  and  you  would  suffer  an  agony  with  every 
wrinkle  and  a  martyrdom  with  every  whitening'  lock,  and 
you  would  grow  hard,  and  haggard,  and  painted,  and 
hideous  even  to  the  vilest  among  men ;  and  you  would 
be  hissed  off  the  stage  in  hatred  by  the  mouths  that  once 
shouted  your  triumphs,  while  you  would  hear  the  fresh 
comers  laugh  as  they  rushed  on  to  be  crowned  with  the 
roses  that  once  wreathed  your  own  forehead.  And  then 
would  come  the  end, — the  hospital  and  the  wooden  shell, 
and  the  grave  trampled  flat  to  the  dust  as  soon  almost  as 
made,  while  the  world  danced  on  in  the  sunlight  unheed- 
ing. Ah  !  be  wise.  Die  while  you  can,  among  your  but- 
terflies and  flowers !" 

The  child,  lying  below  there  in  her  nest,  looked  up  in 
his  eyes  again  and  laughed:  "Viva!"  she  cried,  while 
she  clasped  her  grapes  in  her  two  small  hands. 

"  Viva  ?  What  do  you  mean  by  that  ?  Do  you  mean, 
imperfectly,  to  ask  to  live  in  Italian?  Fie  then!  That 
is  unphilosophic.  Take  the  advice  of  two  philosophers. 
Bolingbroke  says,  there  is  so  much  trouble  in  coming  into 
the  world  and  in  going  out  of  it,  that  it  is  barely  worth 
while  to  be  here  at  all,  and  I  tell  you  the  same.  He  had 
the  cakes  and  ale  too,  but  the  one  got  stale  and  the  other 
bitter.  What  will  it  be  for  you  who  start  with  neither 
cakes  nor  ale  ?  Life's  not  worth  much  to  a  man.  It  is 
worth  just  nothing  at  all  to  a  woman.  It  is  a  mistake 
altogether,  and  lasts  just  long  enough  for  all  to  find  that 
out,  but  not  long  enough  for  any  to  remedy  it.  We  always 
live  the  time  required  to  get  thoroughly  uncomfortable, 
and  as  soon  as  we  are  in  the  1  rack  1  o  sift  the  problem — pafl 
— out  we  go  like  a  rushlight,  the  very  moment  we  begin 
to  burn  brightly.  Be  persuaded  by  me,  and  don't  think  of 
living;-  you  have  a  golden  opportunity  of  getting  quit- 
tance of  the  whole  affair.     Don't  throw  it  away!" 

The  good  advice  of  Experience  was,  as  it  always  is, 
thrown  away  on  the  impetuosity  of  Ignorance.  The  child 
laughed  still  over  her  Chasselas  bunch,  murmuring  still 
over  and  over  again  the  nearest  approach  she  knew  to  a 
name  : 

"Viva— Viva— Viva!" 

"The    obstinacy    of   women    prematurely    developed. 


12  TRICOTRIN, 

Why  will  you  not  know  when  you  are  well  off?  '  Those 
whom  the  gods  love  die  young.'  If  you  would  just  now 
prefer  to  have  your  mother's  love  instead  of  the  gods',  you 
are  wrong.  What  have  you  before  you  ?  You  will  be 
marked  'outcast.'  You  will  have  nothing  as  your  career 
except  to  get  rich  by  snaring  the  foolish ;  or  to  be  virtu- 
ous and  starve  on  three-halfpence  a  day,  having  a  pauper's 
burial  as  reward  for  your  chastity.  If  you  live,  your 
hands  must  be  either  soiled  or  empty.  I  would  die  among 
the  clematis  if  I  were  you." 

But  the  child,  persistently  regardless  of  wise  counsel, 
only  laughed  still,  and  strove  to  struggle  from  her  net- 
work of  blossom  and  of  moss. 

"Your  mind  is  set  upon  living, — what  a  pity!"  mur- 
mured her  solitary  companion.  "When  your  hair  is 
white,  how  you  will  wish  you  had  died  when  it  was  yel- 
low,— everybody  does, — but  while  the  yellow  lasts  no- 
body believes  it!  You  want  to  live?  So  Eve  wanted 
the  '  fruit  of  fairest  colors.'  If  I  were  to  help  you  to  have 
your  own  way  now,  you  would  turn  on  me  thirty  years 
hence  as  your  worst  enemy.  Were  you  able  to  under- 
stand reason, — but  your  sex  would  prevent  that,  let  alone 
your  age.  Let  us  ask  Mistigri.  Mistigri,  is  that  Waif  to 
live  or  to  die  ?" 

The  companion  and  counselor,  who  lived  in  his  pocket, 
and  was  accustomed  to  be  thus  appealed  to,  had  swung 
herself  down  on  to  the  grass,  and  was  now  squatted  on 
the  rail  beside  him.  The  child  catching  sight  of  the  mon- 
key, tried  to  stretch  and  stroke  her,  and  Mistigri,  who 
was  always  of  an  affable,  and,  when  she  had  eaten  suffi- 
cient herself,  of  a  generous  turn  of  mind,  extended  her  lit- 
tle black  paw,  and  tendered  a  nut,  as  an  overture  to  an 
acquaintance. 

"  You  vote  for  life  too?"  cried  Tricotrin.  "Bah,  Mis- 
tigri. I  thought  you  so  sensible, — for  your  sex !  When 
a  discerning  mother,  above  the  weakness  of  womenkind, 
has  arranged  everything  so  neatly,  we  should  be  the  most 
miserable  sentimentalists  to  interfere." 

As  he  spoke,  the  little  creature,  who  had  been  vainly 
striving  to  free  herself  from  her  forest-cradle,  ceased  her 
efforts  and  looked  up  in  piteous  mute  entreaty,  her  eyes 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  13 

wet  and  soft  with  glistening  tears,  her  mouth  trembling 
with  an  unspoken  appeal. 

He,  who  saw  a  wounded  bird  only  to  help  it,  and  met 
a  lame  dog  only  to  carry  it,  was  unable  to  resist  that  pa- 
thetic helplessness.     He  turned  and  lifted  his  voice. 

"Grand 'mere  Virelois,  are  you  there?  Here  is  some- 
thing in  your  way,  not  in  mine." 

In  answer  to  the  shout  there  came  out  from  the  low 
broken  door  of  the  ruined  tower  an  old  peasant  woman, 
brown  and  bent  and  very  aged,  but  blithe  as  a  bird,  and 
with  her  black  eyes  as  bright  as  the  eyes  of  a  mouse 
under  the  white  pent-house  other  high,  starched  cap. 

"  What  is  it,  good  Tricotrin  ?"  she  asked,  in  that  sweet, 
singing  voice  thai  makes  the  accent  of  many  French  peas- 
ant women  so  lingering  and  charming  on  the  ear  ;  the 
voice  that  has  in  it  all  the  contentment  of  the  brave, 
cheery  spirit  within. 

"A  Waif  and  Stray,"  answered  Tricotrin.  "Whether 
from  Mary  Magdalene  or  Madame  la  Marquise  is  unknown, 
probably  will  never  he  known.  Curses  go  home  to  roost, 
but  chickens  don't.  The  Waif  is  irrational,  she  thinks 
a  mouthful  of  black  bread  better  than  easy  extinction 
among  the  ferns.  Claudine  de  Tencin  has  left  a  feminine 
D'Alemberl  in  a  moss-cradle;  are  you  inclined  to  play 
the  pari  of  the  foster-mother?" 

Grand'mere  Virelois  listened  to  the  harangue,  compre- 
hending it  no  more  than  if  he  had  spoken  in  Hebrew,  but 
she  was  used  to  him,  and  thoughl  nothing  of  that. 

"What  is  it  1  am  to  see?"  she  asked  again,  peering 
curiously  with  lively  interest  among  the  leaves.  Before 
he  could  answer  she  had  caught  sight  of  the  child,  with 
vehement  aina/.e  and  ecstatic  wonder;  the  speech  had 
been  as  Hebrew  to  her,  but  the  fact  was  substantial  and 
indisputable.  Crossing  herself  in  her  surprise,  with  a 
thousand  expletives  of  pity  and  admiration,  she  bent  her 
little  withered  bu1  still  active  form  beneath  the  rail,  and 
stooped  and  raised  the  foundling — raised  her,  but  only  a 
little  from  the  ground. 

"Holy  Virginl  Tricotrinl"  she  cried,  "look  here  I  the 
child  is  fastened      Help  me!" 

He  looked  quickly  as  she  called    him,  and  .-aw  that  the 

2 


14  TRICOTRIN, 

withes  of  osiers  and  the  tendrils  of  wild  vine  had  been 
netted  so  tightly  around  the  limbs,  tied  here  and  there 
with  strong  twine,  that  the  infant  could  never  have  es- 
caped from  its  resting-place ;  it  had  evidently  been  so  fast- 
ened that  the  child  might  perish  there  unseen.  His  face 
darkened  as  he  looked. 

"  Murder,  thei  !  not  mere  neglect.  Ah !  this  is  Madame 
la  Marquise  at  work,  not  Magdalene  I"  he  murmured,  as 
he  slashed  the  network  right  and  left  with  his  knife,  and 
set  the  Waif  at  liberty,  while  Grand'mere  Virelois  went 
into  a  woman's  raptures  on  the  young  beauty  of  the  "pe- 
tit Gesu,"  and  a  woman's  vehement  censures  of  a  sister's 
sin. 

Tricotrin  smoked  resignedly,  while  her  raptures  and 
her  diatribes  expended  themselves;  it  was  long  before 
either  were  exhausted. 

"Don't  abuse  the  mother,"  he  interposed  at  last. 
"Everybody  gets  rid  of  troublesome  consequences  when 
they  can.  We've  done  no  good  in  disturbing  her  arrange- 
ments. We  have  only  disinterred  a  living  blunder  that 
she  wished  to  bury." 

"For  shame,  Tricotrin!"  cried  Grand'mere,  quivering 
with  horror,  while  she  folded  the  child  in  her  withered 
arms.  "You  can  jest  on  such  wickedness!  You  can  ex- 
cuse such  a  murderess !" 

"Paf!"  said  Tricotrin,  lightly  blowing  away  a  smoke 
ring.  "  The  whole  system  of  creation  is  a  sliding  scale 
of  murders.  All  the  world  over  life  is  only  sustained  by 
life  being  extinguished." 

Grand'mere  Virelois,  who  was  a  pious  little  woman, 
shuddered  and  clasped  the  child  nearer. 

"Ah — h — h!  the  vile  woman!  How  will  she  see  our 
Lady's  face  on  the  last  day  ?" 

"  How  she  will  meet  the  world  she  lives  in  is  more  the 
question  with  her  now,  I  imagine.  An  eminently  saga- 
cious woman !  and  you  and  I  are  two  sentimentalists  to 
interfere  with  her  admirably  artistic  play.  So  you  would 
live,  little  one  ?  I  wonder  what  you  will  make  of  what 
you  have  got!  A  Jeremiad  if  you  are  a  good  silly 
woman ;  a  Can-can-measure  if  you  are  a  bad  clever  one. 
Which  will  it  be,  I  wonder?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  15 

"Mon  Dieu,  it  is  an  angel!"  murmured  Grand'mere, 
"such  hair,  like  silk, — such  eyes, — such  a  rose  for  a 
mouth  !  And  left  to  die  of  hunger  and  cold  !  Ah,  may 
the  Holy  Mary  find  her  out  and  avenge  her  crime,  the 
wicked  one!" 

"The  vengeance  will  come  quick  if  the  sinner  live  in  a 
garret;  it  will  limp  very  slowly  if  she  shelter  in  a  palace. 
Well,  since  you  take  that  child  in  your  arms,  do  you  mean 
to  find  her  the  piece  of  bread  the  unphilosophic  castaway 
will  want?" 

"Will  I  not!  if  I  go  without  myself.  Oh  the  pretty 
little  child !  who  could  have  left  you  ?  Wherever  the 
mother  dwells,  may  the  good  God  hunt  her  down  !" 

"  Deity  as  a  detective  ?  Not  a  grand  idea  that.  Yet 
it  is  the  heavenly  office  that  looks  dearest  to  man  when  it 
is  exercised  upon  others !  Grand'rnere,  answer  me.  Are 
you  going  to  keep  that  Waif?" 

The  bright  brown  wrinked  homely  face  of  the  good  old 
woman  grew  perplexed: 

"  Ah,  my  friend, — times  are  so  bad, — it  is  hard  work 
to  get  a  bit  in  the  pot  for  one's  self,  and  I  stitch,  stitch, 
si  itch,  and  spin,  spin,  spin,  till  I  am  blind  many  a  time. 
And  yet  the  pretty  child, — with  no  one  to  care  for  it!  I 
do  not  know? — she  must  be  brought  up  hard  if  she  come 
1o  me.  Not  a  lentil  even  to  put  in  the  water  and  make 
one  fancy  it  is  soup,  in  some  days  these  hard  times!  But 
do  you  know  nothing  more  of  her  than  this,  Tricotrin?" 

"Nothing-." 

His  luminous  eyes  met  hers  full,  and  frankly  ;  she  knew 
— all  the  nations  where  he  wandered  knew  —  that  the 
affirmative  of  Tricotrin  was  more  sure  than  the  truth  of 
most  men's  oaths. 

"  Then  she  must  be  abandoned  here  by  some  wretch  to 
starve  unseen  ?" 

"  It  looks  like  it." 

"Ah  !  the  little  aii'j-el  !   What  does  the  barbarous  brutal 

hear!   of  Stone  de.-erve  ?" 

"What  it  will  gel  if  it  lodge  in  (he  breast  that  rags  ami 
tatters  cover, — what  it  will  not  gel  if  it  lodge  in  the  breast 
that  heaves  under  silks  and  laces." 

"True  enough!     But  the  good  God  will  smite  in  his 


16  TRICOT RIN, 

own  time.  Oh,  little  one,  how  could  they  ever  forsake 
thee  ?"  cried  Grand'mere,  caressing  afresh  the  child  who 
was  laughing  and  well  content  in  her  friendly  and  tender 
hold. 

"Then  you  are  going  to  adopt  her  ?" 

"  Adopt  her  ?  Mother  of  Jesus !  I  dare  not  say  that. 
You  know  how  I  live,  Tricotrin, — how  hardly,  though  I 
try  to  let  it  be  cheerfully.  If  I  had  a  little  more  she 
should  share  it,  and  welcome  ;  but  as  it  is, — not  a  mouth- 
ful of  chestnuts,  even,  so  often ;  not  a  drop  of  oil  or  a  bit 
of  garlic  sometimes  weeks  together !  She  would  be  bet- 
ter off  at  the  Foundling  Hospital  than  with  me.  Besides, 
it  is  an  affair  for  the  Mayor  of  the  commune." 

"  Certainly  it  is.  But  if  the  most  notable  Mayor  can 
do  nothing  except  send  this  foundling  among  the  others, 
would  you  like  better  to  keep  her  ?" 

Grand'mere  Virelois  was  silent  and  thoughtful  a  min- 
ute; then  her  little  bright  eyes  glanced  up  at  him  from 
under  their  white  linen  roofing,  with  a  gleam  in  them 
that  was  between  a  smile  and  a  tear. 

"  You  know  how  I  lost  them,  Tricotrin.  One  in  Africa, 
— one  at  the  Barricades, — one  crushed  under  a  great  mar- 
ble block,  building  the  Prefet's  palace  And  then  the 
grandchild  too, — the  only  little  one, — so  pretty,  so  frail, 
so  tender,  killed  that  long  bitter  winter,  because  the  food 
was  so  scarce,  like  the  young  birds  dead  on  the  snow  I 
You  know,  Tricotrin  ? — and  what  use  is  it  to  take  her  to 
perish  like  him,  though  in  her  laughter  and  her  caresses  I 
might  think  that  he  lived  again?" 

"  I  know!"  said  Tricotrin,  softly  with  an  infinite  balm 
of  pity,  and  of  the  remembrance  that  was  the  sweetest 
sympathy,  in  his  voice.  "  Well — if  M.  le  Maire  can  find 
none  to  claim  her,  she  shall  stay  with  you,  grand'mere, 
and,  as  for  the  food,  that  shall  not  trouble  you;  I  will 
have  a  care  of  that." 

"  You?     Holy  Jesus  !  how  good  !" 

"  Not  in  the  least.  I  abetted  her  in  her  ignorant  and 
ridiculous  desh'e  to  exchange  a  pleasant  death  among  the 
clematis  for  all  the  toil  and  turmoil  of  prolonged  existences; 
I  am  clearly  responsible  for  my  share  in  the  folly.  I  cut 
the  meshes  that   her  sagacious  mother  had   knotted    so 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  If 

hardily ;  I  must  accept  my  part  in  the  onus  of  such  un- 
warrantable interference.  You  keep  the  Waif;  and  I 
will  be  at  the  cost  of  her." 

"But  then,  Tricotrin,  you  call  yourself  poor?" 

"So  I  am.  But  one  need  not  be  a  millionaire  to  be  able 
to  get  a  few  crumbs  for  that  robin.  The  creature  per- 
sisted in  living,  and  I  humored  her  caprice.  It  was 
mock  humanity,  paltry  sentiment;  Mistigri  was  partly 
at  fault,  but  I  mostly.  We  must  accept  the  results. 
They  will  be  disastrous  probably — the  creature  is  femi- 
nine— but  such  as  they  are  we  must  make  the  best  of 
them." 

"Then  you  will  adopt  her?" 

"Not  in  the  least.  But  I  will  see  she  has  something  to 
eat;  and  that  you  are  able  to  give  it  her  if  her  parents  can- 
not be  found.  Here  is  a  gold  bit  for  the  present  minute, 
and  when  we  know  whether  she  is  really  and  truly  a  Waif, 
you  shall  have  more  to  keep  the  pot  over  your  fire  full  and 
boiling.     Adieu,  grand'mere." 

With  that  farewell,  he,  heedless  of  the  voluble  thanks 
and  praises  that  the  old  woman  showered  after  him,  and 
of  the  outcries  of  the  child  who  called  to  Mistigri,  put  his 
pipe  in  his  mouth,  his  violin  in  his  pocket,  and  throwing 
his  knapsack  over  his  shoulder  brushed  his  way  through 
the  forest  growth. 

"Mock-sentiment!"  he  said  to  himself.  "  You  and  I 
have  done  a  silly  thing,  Mistigri.    What  will  come  of  it  ?" 

The  monkey  cracked  a  fair-looking  fat  nut  which  she 
carried,  with  glee;  and  cast  it  forth  in  disgust:  the  hand- 
some shell  had  dust  and  a  maggot  within  it. 

"Ah!"  thought  Tricotrin;  taking  the  nut  as  a  parable, 
"  will  that  young  innocent-looking  life  yonder  ever  re- 
ward us  by  corruption  at  its  core?" 


2* 


18  TRIC0TR1N, 


CHAPTER  II. 

There  were  two  leagues  between  him  and  the  near- 
est town,  and  this  wanderer  little  loved  any  contact  with 
the  law  or  its  officers,  with  the  routine  and  details  of  citi- 
zenship and  communities.  But  chance  had  brought  him, 
and  him  alone,  upon  his  little  castaway.  Bohemian 
though  he  was,  he  would  not  neglect  the  duty  that  the 
trouvaille,  accidental  and  little  welcome  as  it  might  be, 
brought  with  it.  An  evil  thing  had  been  clearly  done ; 
the  search  for  it  lay  with  the  administrators  of  civil  laws. 
He  had  no  liking  for  them,  and  no  faith  in  their  sincerity 
or  their  efficiency,  but  at  the  same  time  the  foundling's 
safety  needed  their  interference.  So  he  betook  himself 
straight  through  the  vineyards  across  into  the  white  long 
road,  poplar-fringed  and  without  shadow,  which  led  to  the 
small,  still,  gray  town,  whose  peaked  roofs  and  pointed 
towers  were  rising  far  away  out  from  a  mass  of  autumn- 
tinted  orchards. 

It  was  a  rapid  progress  with  his  light  swift  tread,  yet 
creature  after  creature  stopped  him,  either  of  his  own  will 
or  at  their  entreaty. 

The  women  working  in  the  fields;  the  vintagers  at  la- 
bor among  the  grapes ;  the  meek-eyed  cows  looking  over 
the  stone  fences ;  the  team  of  bullocks  drawing  a  timber 
wagon  wearily  along;  the  children  filling  a  pitcher  at 
the  roadside  waterspout;  the  old  women  resting  under 
the  wayside  crosses; — all  had  words  from  him,  words 
which  left  them  brighter,  braver,  happier,  than  they  had 
been  before  those  kindly  eyes,  shining  so  lustrous  in  the 
sun,  had  fallen  on  them.  Man  and  child,  woman  and  ani- 
mal, felt  the  influence  of  glance  and  word,  as  the  languid 
flowers  feel  the  dew,  as  the  shaded  fruit  feels  the  summer 
warmth. 

"What  makes  thee  so  merry,  child?  Has  any  one 
given  thee  money?"  asked  an  old  woman,  deaf  and 
blind,  sitting  knitting  in  the  front  of  her  vine-hung,  rock- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  19 

built  cottage,  of  the  grandson,  who  came  bounding  to  her 
side. 

The  boy  laughed  gayly. 

"No,  grand'mere.  Better  still.  Tricotrin  spoke  to  me 
as  he  passed!" 

"Ah,  ah!  Tricotrin?  I  wish  thou  hadst  brought  him 
hither.  He  would  have  mended  thy  mother's  spinning- 
wheel — and  there  are  none  like  him  for  making  dark 
things  look  bright." 

"He  was  in  haste,  grand'mere.  And  he  had  loitered 
already,  to  look  at  Blase  Turgot's  sick  mare." 

"And  cured  her  at  a  touch, — is  it  not?" 

"  Not  quite  that.  He  says  he  cannot  work  miracles, 
though  we  think  he  can.  But  it  is  certain  the  beast  let 
him  look  at  her  wound  as  quietly  as  a  lamb, — she  who 
kicks  and  bites  at  all  who  go  near  ! — and  he  has  told  Blase 
Turgot  how  to  get  her  well  in  a  week." 

The  old  blind  knitter  nodded  her  head  several  times, 
with  sapient  comprehension. 

"To  be  sure,  to  be  sure!  He  can  do  what  he  likes. 
If  lie  be  the  Wandering  Jew,  as  they  say,  it  was  wise  of 
the  jrood  Gesu  to  bid  him  stay  so  long  on  earth." 

"You  think  he  is  that,  grand'inere?"  whispered  the 
boy  in  awe,  that  subdued  his  mirth. 

The  old  woman  nodded  her  head  again  with  meaning 
emphasis. 

"It  is  said,"  she  answered  significantly.  "And  I  have 
seen  things " 

"But  the  Jew  was  wicked,  grand'mere ;  and  he  is  so 
good?"  objected  the  boy,  who  loved  little  to  think  that 
the  hand  which  had  just  tossed  him  a  great  golden-brown 
pear  was  a  hand  accursed  of  his  Church. 

The  grandmother  laid  her  knitting  down  on  her  lap, 
looking  out  at  the  sunshine  as  though  her  blind  eyes  saw 
its  beauty. 

"Pierre, — it  may  well  be  that  a  life  led  in  atonement 
is  the  life  nearest  to  God,  and  most  blessed  to  men.  Be- 
sides,"— and  she  lowered  her  voice  as  one  who  speaks 
sacrilege  fearingly,  "besides — thou  knowest  he  has  no 
love  for  the  priests,  has  Tricotrin." 

Pierre  nodded,  but  he  remained  unconvinced;    in  his 


20  TRICOTRIN, 

secret  soul  he  had  no  love  for  the  priests  himself,  finding 
infinite  weariness  in  his  aves ;  and,  moreover,  the  true  in- 
stinct of  the  child  felt,  without  reasoning  on  its  instinct, 
that  the  brightness  and  the  strength,  the  genius  and  the 
sweetness,  of  the  life  they  spoke  of  were  too  unshadowed, 
and  too  unsaddened,  to  be  the  mournful  though  hallowed 
offsprings  of  remorse. 


CHAPTER  III. 

"You  get  on  ill,  friend  Turgot  ?  Of  course  you  do. 
You  are  surprised  ?  I  am  not.  For  a  sou  you  give  a  sou's 
worth.  Ignoramus!  how  is  that  compatible  with  pros- 
perity? You  want  a  receipt  for  the  philosopher's  stone  ? 
I  will  give  you  one.  Stint  the  corn  to  the  peasant's  mule, 
and  give  overmeasure  to  the  rich  man's  fat  stalled  beast. 
Cheat  the  widow  out  of  an  egg  every  time  she  sells  you 
poultry,  and  throw  a  dainty  tit-bit  gratis  into  M.  le  Cure's 
dinner.  When  the  woman-tramp  sits  down  famished  give 
her  the  mouldy  bread,  and  when  the  Mayor  of  the  Com- 
mune calls  for  wine  serve  him  your  best  and  oiliest.  As 
soon  as  an  inundation  or  a  fire  breaks  out  far  away  in 
other  provinces,  let  your  name  loom  large  in  subscrip- 
tion ;  when  the  ragged  children  creep  in  to  pick  up  the 
odd  barley-corns  thrown  to  your  barn-door  fowls,  drive 
them  away  with  a  crack  of  the  whip.  Do  this  and  more 
likewise,  Turgot,  and  you  will  find  the  philosopher's  stone 
turn  you  gold!" 

Tavern-keeper  Turgot,  thus  apostrophized,  shook  his 
head  pensively  in  a  sorrowful  perplexity,  standing  at  the 
porch  of  his  good  inn,  the  Golden  Lion. 

"Ah!  it  is  well  to  talk,  Tricotrin,  and  your  lips  ever 
melt  into  laughter  and  irony.  But  you  know  me, — my 
receipts  are  small,  my  compassion  is  enormous ;  the 
money  runs,  runs,  runs,  like  a  scampering  mouse,  and 
never  comes  back  again ! — what  would  you  ?  I  have  not 
the  talent  to  cheat. " 

"And  you  became  an  inn-keeper  ?     Imbecile  !" 


77777  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  21 

"An  inn-keeper  ?  Eh,  monsieur !  It  is  not  only  in  an 
inn  one  needs  that  talent  to  prosper." 

"  Oh  no ;  it  is  wanted  in  imperial  cabinets  as  much  as 
in  wayside  ones ;  and  the  bills  of  a  country  want  doctor- 
ing as  much  as  the  bills  of  a  cafe  1  If  you  cannot  cheat, 
my  Turgot " 

"What  can  I  do  ?" 

"Break  stones.    It  is  the  general  finale  of  honesty!" 

The  landlord,  amused  if  not  solaced,  laughed  a  little 
despite  himself,  and  went  within  to  attend  the  wants  of 
one  of  the  few  wanderers  to  the  unprofitable  though  ad- 
mirable Golden  Lion,  which  stood  so  charmingly,  close 
under  the  shadow  of  a  noble  old  brown  church,  and  front- 
ing the  market-place,  then  all  ablaze  with  rich  autumnal 
color,  where  the  fruit-women  sat  with  piles  of  melons, 
and  gourds,  and  late  peaches,  and  early  grapes,  and  heaps 
of  damp,  sweet-smelling,  gathered  herbs. 

Tricotrin  left  alone  watched  the  market  awhile,  taking 
an  artist's  pleasure  in  all  that  glow  and  glory  of  confused 
hues,  and  thinking  of  the  words  of  Antoninus, — ''What- 
ever the  seasons  bear  shall  be  joyful  fruit  to  me,  O  Na- 
ture; from  thee  are  all  things,  in  thee  they  subsist,  to 
thee  they  return." 

For  Nature  was  mother,  mistress,  daughter,  deity, 
idol,  teacher,  friend,  all  in  one  to  Tricotrin;  and  in  all 
her  protean  shapes  he  loved  her. 

"What  is  it?  All.  What  has  it?  Nothing,"  was  the 
fatuous  line  anent  the  third  estate  which  once,  through 
Sieyes,  convulsed  a  nation. 

Much  such  a  line  expressed  the  social  status  of  Tri- 
cot rin,  philosopher,  poet,  cosmopolitan,  artist,  democrat, 
and  wanderer.  " Many-sided "  as  ever  could  be  exacted 
by  Greek  zeal  for  mortal  perfection,  he  could  be  every- 
thing by  turns;  but,  for  possessions,  he  had  naught  save 
his  Straduarius,  his  Mistigri,  and  a  well-beloved  At- 
tavante's  Dante.  He  had  the  genius  of  a  Mozart, — 
to  make  music  only  to  a  peasant's  festival  or  his  own 
solitude;  the  eloquence  of  a  Mirabeau, — to  remain  a 
bohemian  and  lie  called  a  scamp;  the  sagacity  of  a  Tal- 
leyrand,— to  he  worth  no  more  in  any  pecuniary  sense 
than  one  of  the  vintagers  at  work  among  the  grapes;  the 


22  TRICOTRIN. 

versatility  of  a  Oichton, — to  shed  his  talents'  luster  forth 
on  French  hamlets'  bridal  feasts,  Italian  olive-growers' 
frugal  suppers,  Spanish  muleteers'  camp-fires,  Irish  cot- 
ters' wakes  and  revels,  Paris  laborers'  balls  and  wine- 
bouts  ;  the  wisdom  of  a  Boethius, — to  laugh  at  life  with 
the  glorious  mirth  of  Aristophanes,  to  need  as  little  in 
his  daily  wants  as  Louis  Cornaro,  to  love  all  pleasure 
with  the  Burgundian  jest  of  a  Piron.  Was  this  the  reck- 
less waste  of  marvelous  gifts  thrown  away  like  diamonds 
cast  on  a  sea  ?  or  was  it  a  brave,  joyous,  wise  adoption 
of  a  life  without  care  and  warmed  by  the  sunlight  of 
nature,  careless  of  the  gas  glare  of  fame  ? 

The  world  thought  one  way;  the  bohemian  the  other. 
"Judge  no  life  until  its  close  has  been  seen,"  says  the 
sage;  hence  it  had  not  yet  been  proved  whether  the 
world  or  the  bohemian  was  most  right. 

That  he  was  Tricotrin, — a  most  markedly  distinctive 
personality  moreover, — was  all  that  any  one  knew  of 
him.  It  was  enough  for  the  people  who  loved  him ;  and 
they  stretched  from  Danube  to  Guadalquiver,  from  Liffey 
to  Tiber,  from  Euphrates  to  the  Amazon,  while  in  France, 
the  land  of  his  adoption  if  not  of  his  birth,  the  hand 
which  should  have  dared  to  touch  him  would  have  been 
bolder  than  the  boldest  of  the  iron  hands  which  have 
seized  and  swayed  her  scepter. 

His  life  was  a  poem ;  often  an  ironic,  often  an  erotic, 
often  a  sublime  one ;  a  love-ode  one  day,  a  rhymed  satire 
the  next,  now  light  as  Suckling's  verse,  now  bitter  as 
Juvenal's,  oftenest  a  Bacchic  chant,  or  a  Hudibrastic 
piece  of  mockery,  but  not  seldom  a  noble  Homeric  epic. 
Life  was  a  poem  with  him:  he  had  as  little  sympathy 
with  those  who  made  it  a  wailing  Miserere  of  regret  as 
with  those  who  made  it  a  Monologue  of  self. 

He  stood  looking  out  now  on  the  fruit-market,  enjoying 
its  profusion  of  color  as  other  men  enjoy  wine;  and  taking 
a  peach  from  the  basket  of  one  of  the  girl-sellers,  as  pretty 
a  little  brown  creature  in  the  archness  of  her  sixteen  years 
as  ever  Florian  or  Greuze  caressed  ere  transferring  to 
eclogue  or  easel. 

"  Have  you  had  a  good  time  all  this  summer,  Ninette  ?" 
he  asked  her  as  they  loitered  in  the  deep  oak  porch  of  the 
old  Golden  Lion. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAFF  AND   STRAY.  23 

"Ah  yes!"  answered  Ninette,  ever  loquacious,  thrust- 
ing her  tanned  plump  hands  deep  into  the  coolness  of 
the  vine-leaves  as  she  rearranged  her  fruit.  "  You 
know  that  the  chateau  is  open — bought  by  a  great  for- 
eign Tord  ?" 

"Indeed  ?  And  you  have  sold  much  there?" 
"  Oh  enormously  1"  cried  Ninette.  "  The  household  has 
taken  so  much,  though  the  seigneur  is  only  just  there. 
And  they  have  made  the  place  like  a  fairy  palace, — mon 
Dieu!  It  is  so  beautiful,  so  beautiful;  that  old  ruined 
desolate  Villiers  is  now  like  a  dream,  Tricotrin!  Valen- 
tin works  in  the  gardens,  and  I  have  been  over  it  once, 
before  milord  came; — and  once  since  they  let  me  look 
through  a  grating,  when  he  was  at  his  banquet,  with  a 
king's  state  all  about  him.  And  he  is  so  handsome — 
that  English  noble! " 


'O' 


And  Ninette  gave  a  little  quick  sigh  as  she  replaced 
her  peaches  in  their  green  nest.  Tricotrin  smiled,  with  a 
slight  touch  of  pity  in  the  amusement  of  the  smile. 

"Leave  the  noble  alone,  Ninette!  "His  hand  would 
only  touch  your  soft  cheek  to  soil  it.  The  kiss  of  the 
eagle's  beak  kills  the  wild  wood-dove.  Do  not  let  a 
glance  of  the  aristocrat  make  you  cold  to  poor  Valentin." 

Ninette  flushed  ruddily,  like  one  of  her  own  peaches ; 
but  she  laughed  with  a  frank,  open  laugh,  that  reassured 
Tricotrin  on  the  fear  he  had  entertained  for  her  peace. 

"Oh!  there  is  no  thought  of  that  folly!  Do  you  fancy 
I  am  such  a  little  fool !  Milord  Estmere  has  never 
looked  at  me  even!  and  they  §ay  he  is  so  proud, — proud 
as  a  Bourbon !" 

"Estmere!" — he  repeated  the  name  rapidly  with  an 
eager  intonation. 

"That  is  what  they  call  him.  He  is  a  great  man;  he 
is  nothing  to  me!*'  said  Ninette,  pettishly,  shouldering 
her  fruit  afresh  and  going  off  to  her  stall  in  as  near  an 
approach  to  bad  temper  as  the  bright  brunette  could 
know. 

Tricotrin's  eyes  followed  her,  without  seeing  her,  to  the 
tawny  leathern  awning  under  which  her  vivacious  face 
gleamed  so  prettily:  the  look  of  interest  and  of  eagerness 
was  still  upon  his  features,  and  the  smile  about  his  mouth 


24  TR  ICO  TRUST, 

had  a  certain  sadness  in  it  foreign  to  the  careless,  happy, 
humorous  laughter  common  there. 

"Estmere!"  he  repeated  to  himself.  The  name  re- 
called many  memories. 

"Estmere  at  this  old  chateau!"  he  thought  as  he 
moved  away  from  the  Lion  d'Or  and  through  the 
checkered  morning  light  in  which  the  people  of  the  little 
town  were  thronging,  some  to  market,  some  to  matins. 
"That  is  droll.  He  comes  here  in  the  vintage, — as  if 
Beaumanoir,  in  those  old  cool  green  woods  were  not 
enough  for  one  man!  Has  he  aught  to  do  with  that 
little  Waif,  I  wonder  ?  No  ;  not  wittingly  at  least.  Earl 
Eustace  has  none  of  these  follies,  and,  if  he  had,  would 
never  drive  a  woman  to  desperation ;  such  desperation 
as  must  have  driven  that  one,  whoever  she  be,  to  such  a 
deed.  He  was  betrayed,  most  foully,  but  he  is  no  be- 
trayer." 

As  the  thoughts,  disjointed  and  vague,  passed  through 
his  mind,  he  made  his  way  across  the  market-place,  for 
once  too  absorbed  in  reflection  and  in  memory  to  bid 
farewell  to  Ninette,  or  laugh  an  adieu  with  the  dark, 
handsome  matrons,  and  the  old  hardfeatured  market- 
women,  who  were  chaffering  and  chattering  over  the 
price  of  poultry  and  the  ripeness  of  melons,  while  the 
Angelus  rang  from  the  belfry.  That  heavier  and  graver 
fit  of  musing  lasted  till  he  was  out  of  the  rampart-walls 
that  still  circled  the  small  town  with  their  relics  of 
feudal  fortifications,  their  ditches  full  of  bulrushes  and 
great  campanula-flowers,  their  stones  covered  with  lichens 
and  with  ivy.  Then,  when  he  was  once  more  on  the 
highway,  with  the  noble  champagne  country  stretching 
in  vineyards,  and  rising  in  hills,  around  him,  Tricotrin 
shook  himself,  as  a  big  dog  will  shake  his  curls,  and 
shook  the  alien  depression  off  him;  laughed  his  own 
mellow  laughter  at  himself,  and  walked  away  at  a  swift, 
light  pace,  singing  in  the  richest  and  most  tuneful  of 
tenors  Beranger's 

"Diogene, 
Sous  ton  manteau 
Libre  et  content  je  ris  et  bois  sans  gene  I" 


TEE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  25 

till  the  browsing  herds  lifted  their  heads  at  the  song, 
and  the  vine-laborers  in  the  distance  caught  the  air  and 
hummed  it  back  again,  saying  to  each  other,  "Tricotrin 
must  be  near;  you  hear  his  DiogeneV 

He  went  back  to  the  place  where  the  day  previous  he 
had  lighted  on  the  Waif. 

The  crumbled  tower,  so  old  that  its  history  was  lost  in 
the  days  of  Philip  the  Fair,  with  all  the  greenery  cluster- 
ing round  its  masonry,  and  the  stream  splashing  under 
its  base,  had  been  abandoned  to  the  bats,  the  owls,  the 
hares,  and  to  the  widowed  seventy  year  old  Mauon 
Virelois,  who  lived  in  its  shelter  very  hardly,  as  she  had 
said,  maintaining  life  in  her  by  sheer  dint  of  the  coura- 
geous, patient,  hopeful  thrift  of  her  desolate  old  age. 

The  tower  was  approached  by  a  perilous  flight  of  stone 
steps  which  led  straight  into  its  interior;  Tricotrin 
mounted  them  quickly,  being  as  lithe  and  swift  as  a 
chamois,  and  entered  the  chamber.  It  was  the  only  one 
that  could  be  used  for  human  occupance,  but  clean,  and 
brightened  with  French  skill,  and  with  the  radiance  of 
the  autumnal  creepers  that  forced  themselves  through  the 
crevices  and  grew  profusely  over  the  inner  walls.  Jn  the 
center  of  the  gray  room,  moreover,  the  old  woman  herself 
made  a  point  of  picturesque  color,  where  she  sat  with 
an  orange  kerchief  pinned  under  her  chin,  and  the  sun  on 
the  dark  blue  serge  of  her  gown,  as  she  spun  on  and  on 
at  her  spinning-wheel,  looking  up  with  a  cheery  smile  as 
he  came  to  her. 

"Well,  my  good  friend?  what  news  of  the  little  one?" 

"  No  news,*'  answered  Tricotrin.  "  Nobody  knows  any- 
thing aboul  her,  and  to  the  besl  of  my  belief  never  will. 
I  have  told  whal  we  saw  to  the  Mayor— -good,  stupid 
soul — and  the  police  are  on  the  lookout  about  it,  but  as 
yet  there  is  no  clew  to  who  dropped  her  there.  She 
must  have  been  laid  down  very  early  at  sunrise,  before 
anybody  was  stirring 

"No  doubt!  Ali!  the  wicked  wretches"— and  grand'- 
mere  whirled  her  wheel  with  furious  mutterings  of  hor- 
ror and  imprecation  upon  the  unknown  hands  of  the  in- 
fant's deserters. 

Tricotrin  listening  amusedly,  let  her  wrath  expend  it- 


26  TRICOTRIN, 

self  uninterrupted,  while  at  the  same  moment  an  inner 
door  that  stood  a  little  open  was  acting  as  an  oaken  frame 
to  the  subject  of  their  speech,  who  stood  like  some  old- 
world  painter's  cherub,  with  a  large  plume  of  white  lilies 
in  one  hand,  the  other  pushing  back  from  her  brow  the 
clusters  of  her  golden  curls. 

Tricotrin  surveyed  her  in  silence,  and  she  surveyed 
him, — a  singularly  lovely  child,  with  great,  dark,  medi- 
tative eyes,  and  limbs  like  a  sculptured  Cupid's  scarcely 
concealed  by  the  little  loose  linen  shirt  she  wore,  dropping 
off  her  snowy  chest. 

"Sol  there  you  are,  my  friend?  Are  you  not  ashamed 
to  face  me?"  said  Tricotrin,  at  length.  "How  obstinate 
is  your  sex!  Now,  if  you  were  heiress  to  an  empire,  or 
if  the  fate  of  some  great  race  depended  on  you,  the  first 
puff  of  cold  wind  would  kill  you,  just  out  of  the  contra- 
dictory malice  of  things.  A  mere  unowned  bagatelle,  a 
smuggled  trifle  of  straw,  a  nameless,  purposeless  bit  of 
drift-wood,  without  even  your  origin  marked  on  you,  a 
spurious  coin  without  date  or  stamp  of  the  mint,  you 
flourish  just  because  you  are  wanted  no  more  than  a 
stray  mongrel  puppy,  and  are  of  not  so  much  conse- 
quence as  a  lost  bunch  of  keys.  Are  you  not  ashamed  of 
yourself?" 

"Tricotrin,"  murmured  the  grand'mere  reproachfully, 
"how  can  you  talk  so  to  that  little  angel,  when  you  know 
your  heart  is  full  of  pity  for  the " 

"  Waif,"  interrupted  Tricotrin.  "Certainly  I  pity  her. 
I  pity  every  new  creature  tumbled,  nilly-willy,  into  this 
ill-managed  world.  Besides,  she  must  grow  up  a  bad 
woman.  Born  under  a  contraband  flag,  there  will  be 
nothing  for  her  but  to  join  the  pirates.  She  will  not  be 
to  blame.  The  minute  she  was  born  the  law  drew  a  bar 
between  her  and  the  sunlight.  She  must,  of  necessity, 
steal  the  very  few  sugar-plums  she  will  ever  get,  in  the 
darkness  of  lawlessness.  She  is  branded  w'ithout  de- 
serving it.  When  she  is  old  enough  to  see  that  ugly, 
unmerited  brand,  stamped  there  for  no  sin  of  her  own, 
she  will  be  one  of  a  thousand  if  she  do  not  do  something 
to  justify  the  scorch  of  the  iron." 

The  child,  who  had  stood  as  if  listening,  gathering 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  27 

confidence,  sprang,  in  a  sudden  sunny  impulse,  on  to  the 
old  woman's  lap,  and  held  up  her  lilies  to  Tricotrin. 

"  'Garde!  si  zoli!" 

Tricotrin  nodded  assent  to  the  lisped  words. 

"  You  would  intend  to  say  that  though  you  are  born 
without  sugar-plums  you  contrive  to  console  yourself 
with  flowers;  which  is  symbolical  of  the  fact  that  nature 
is  often  kind  to  what  man  kicks?  I  concede  the  propo- 
sition. Nature  is  a  shocking  Socialist;  that  is  why  she 
is  shut  out  from  forum,  school,  and  pulpit.  She  is  a 
white-robed  Hypatia,  whom  the  saints  stone,  lest  her 
teachings  should  unseat  them, — and  there  is  no  venom 
like  the  venom  of  the  Cyrils  of  the  Creeds." 

"Mon  Dieu!  to  bewilder  the  precious  infant  with  all 
that  wisdom!"  murmured  grand'mere,  concluding  that  it 
must  be  wisdom  by  a  rule  that  often  actuates  the  world's 
acceptance  of  unproved  sagacity, — namely,  that  it  was 
completely  unintelligible.  "Is  she  not  lovely,  the  little 
darling?    What  a  woman  she  will  make!" 

"Humph!"  said  Tricotrin,  musingly;  "she  is  well 
enough.  Beauty,  to  a  woman  who  has  no  name,  no 
father,  and  no  money,  is  much  like  the  bloom  to  an  un- 
nctted  peach — only  a  signal  for  the  wasps  to  sting,  and 
the  flies  to  fasten,  and  the  thieves  to  steal.  Had  she 
been  ugly  it  would  not  have  been  such  a  sin  against  the 
future  to  have  rescued  her.  You,  and  I,  and  Mistigri 
did  a  great  wrong.  I  am  afraid  we  owe  her  some- 
thing." 

"And  you  will  help  me  to  keep  her,  Tricotrin,  if 
nothing  is  found?"  cried  the  old  woman,  caressing  the 
child's  golden  head. 

"  What  does  she  call  herself?"  he  asked,  parrying  the 
question. 

"Only  that  one  word,  Viva." 

"Viva?  .Not  a  bad  name  for  a  little  pirate,  and  that 
is  what  she  will  turn,  no  doubt,  out  of  vengeance  for 
having  been  smuggled  into  this  rough  existence,  like  a 
bale  of  silk  smuggled  on  to  a  rocky  shore." 

Tricotrin  smoked  in  silence  some  moments,  contem- 
plating the  Waif,  who.  leaving  her  protectress  with  all 
the  ungrateful  vivacious  caprice  of  childhood,  had  thrown 


28  TRICOTRIN, 

herself  down  within  the  doorway,  laughing  and  playing 
with  Mistigri,  who  had  no  aversion  to  a  game  at  any 
time.  She  was  perfectly  happy  now,  whatever  the  future 
held  in  store.  In  her  young  form  life  was  a  rosebud  just 
thrust  forth  into  the  light  of  the  world;  if  in  the  bud  a 
canker  festered  it  would  not  be  seen  until  leaf  after  leaf 
should  have  unclosed,  and  fallen  beyond  recall. 

The  old  dame  glanced  first  at  one,  then  at  the  other; 
and  set  her  spinning-wheel  whirling  again.  She  had  a 
certain  awe  of  Tricotrin;  holding  the  credence  prevalent 
in  her  country  that  he  was  the  Wandering  Jew,  could 
turn  dead  leaves  into  gold  at  pleasure,  could  heal  the 
sick  and  smite  the  healthy,  call  down  storms  and  call  up 
whirlwinds,  become  invisible  and  be  always  omniscient. 
So  she  did  not  dare  attempt  an  interruption  to  his  musing, 
but  left  him  to  his  own  thoughts, — thoughts  ranging  over 
a  career  filled  with  the  mirth  of  Piron,  the  love  of  color 
and  of  fragrance  of  Dufresny,  the  philosophies  of  Diderot, 
the  adventurous  fortunes  of  Le  Clos. 

His  erratic,  careless,  glorious  open-air  life  was  mellow 
as  good  wine,  and  radiant  as  noon;  yet  he  too,  like  the 
child,  was  a  Waif  and  Stray.  It  moved  him  with  a  cer- 
tain sympathy  for  her,  which  tempted  him  not  to  cast 
her  forth  on  chance.  For  the  fragile  porcelain  of  a  female 
child's  existence  might  perish  on  the  rapids  of  that  stream 
of  hazard,  where  the  strong  gold-dashed  bronze  of  a  bold 
male  life  could  float  and  vanquish. 

Suddenly,  still  with  his  attention  on  her,  he  drew  out 
his  violiu  and  touched  the  strings.  It  had  belonged  to 
Blanchini,  and  had  often  lulled  Pauline  Borghese  to 
slumber,  while  its  sounds  floated  over  the  orange  grove 
at  Rome.  Tricotrin  bent  his  head  over  it,  aud  played  one 
of  those  divine  melodies  of  Lulli's,  such  as  used  to  echo 
down  the  alleys  of  Versailles,  and  breathe  over  the 
voluptuous  limbs  of  Coustou's  goddesses. 

He  was  a  master  of  its  melody,  such  as  an  age  sees 
only  once  or  twice  in  its  generation.  Laughing  like 
some  troop  of  revelei*s, — sobbing  like  some  life  worn  out 
by  pain, — rich  as  a  carol  of  choristers'  voices, — sad  as 
the  moaning  of  winds  through  the  sea-pines, — the  music 
followed  his  will  as  the  souls  that  he  moves  follow  tho 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  29 

moods  of  a  great  poet,  who  wakes  tears  or  raillery  at  his 
wish,  and  reaches  now  to  heaven,  and  penetrates  now 
into  the  darkness  of  hell. 

As  he  thus  played,  the  child,  lying  in  a  breadth  of  sun- 
shine," glanced  up  and  listened.  Gradually  the  lilies 
dropped  from  her  hands,  her  playmate  was  neglected, 
her  face  flushed  with  wondering  awe,  her  eyes  grew 
humid,  her  mouth  parted  in  breathless  delight.  She 
never  moved  or  made  a  sound,  but  heard,  spell-bound  to 
the  last. 

He  laid  the  instrument  aside  and  looked  at  her. 

"  You  have  a  soul — a  good  deal  of  it  for  a  female  thing; 
though  I  am  half  afraid  you  have  only  just  sufficient  to 
get  you  into  mischief.  You  will  never  be  a  saint,  a 
martyr,  or  a  heroine,  my  friend :  but  I  should  not  be 
surprised  if  you  develop  into  a  Pompadour  or  a  Cabar- 
rus. Well,  that  was  your  lottery.  If  you  had  gone  on 
playing  I  would  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  you;  as 
you  answer  to  my  music  I  will  have  something.  I  do 
not  want  you;  you  will  be  a  nuisance;  but  saving  your 
life  is  almost  as  bad  as  giving  it  you,  and,  after  your  un- 
known parents,  I  am  the  most  guilty  person  toward  you. 
I  have  not  much  for  mvself;  I  shall  not  have  much  for 
you;  but,  if  nothing  better  come  up  for  you,  if  nothing 
be  learned  of  your  rights,  we  will  see  what  we  can  do  to 
let  Ghrand'mere  Virelois  keep  you,  since  she  has  such  a 
taste  for  the  trouble." 

"The  Holy  Virgin  bless  youl"  cried  the  old  woman. 
"You  will  adopt  her? " 

"Far  from  it.  No  wise  man  binds  himself.  Though  I 
am  here  to-day,  I  may  be  in  the  moon  to-morrow.  Life 
is  a  game  of  chance;  so  much  the  better.  We  should  he 
stilled  if  chance  did  not  now  and  then  kick  a  throne  into 
space,  and  give  the  accolade  to  a  beggar,  to  redress  the 
balance  and  clear  the  atmosphere.  Adopt  her?  No.  But, 
as  I  said,  I  will  help  you  to  keep  her.  She  will  not  cost 
much  vet  awhile;  and  t  lit  re  maybe  sillier  ways  of  spend- 
in--  coins  than  in  floating  a  Waif. — though  I  doubt  it. 
And  I  do  not  expect  much  of  her  future.  She  has  a  soul ; 
but  female  creatures  with  yellow  locks,  and  mouths  like 

'3* 


30  TRICOTRIN, 

scarlet  japom'ca  buds,  always  kill  any  soul  in  them  they 
may  have  been  born  with  as  rapidly  as  possible  when 
once  they  are  launched  on  the  world " 

"Ah  hush,  Tricotrin!"  murmured  grand'mere,  en- 
treatingly.  "All  that  I  can  do  to  teach  her  aright  I  will. 
You  know  that." 

"  Surely  I  do.  But  the  teachers  most  likely  to  get 
hold  of  such  a  woman  as  the  Waif  will  be,  are  two  devils, 
— Vanity  and  the  Desire  of  Riches.  If  you  know  how  to 
exorcise  them,  Amie  Virelois,  you  know  what  has  beaten 
all  the  dealers  in  new  creeds  since  the  world  began. 
Mademoiselle  Yival — you  will  not  like  Life.  'Plus  aloes 
quam  mellis  habet,' — specially  for  your  sex.  All  I  say  is, 
when  you  find  out  how  much  better  it  would  have  been 
to  have  embraced  a  golden  opportunity,  and  died  among 
the  clematis,  do  me  the  justice  to  remember  that  it  was 
your  own  obstinacy,  and  no  lack  of  my  good  counsel, 
that  made  you  prolong  your  existence." 

With  which  farewell  address  Tricotrin  turned  to  the 
old  peasant,  and  in  a  few  serious  phrases  explained  to 
her  the  total  ignorance  prevalent  through  the  district  of 
any  clew,  or  even  suspicion,  that  could  lead  them  to 
identify  the  deserters  of  the  child,  and  settled  to  provide 
her  with  the  small  sum  necessary  for  the  young  creat- 
ure's maintenance,  so  long  as  nothing  occurred  to  make 
it  possible  to  enforce  her  maintenance  from  those  on  whom 
its  duty  rested.  In  the  absence  of  this,  the  foundling, 
without  him,  would  have  gone  to  public  charity.  Partly 
out  of  the  sympathetic  compassion  instinctive  in  him, 
chiefly  out  of  the  knowledge  of  the  poor  old  woman's 
poverty  and  desolation,  which  his  assistance  would 
lighten  and  the  infant's  presence  enliven,  he  promised 
to  charge  himself  with  the  cost  of  the  child,  so  long 
at  least  as  nothing  should  be  discovered  of  her  rightful 
guardians. 

Grand'mere  Yirelois  knew  well  that  the  bond  would 
never  be  broken,  and  that  the  money  given  her  would 
come  as  surely  as  the  spring  or  the  autumn  came ; 
though  she  knew  him  also  well  enough  to  be  aware  that 
it  was  a  thousand  chances  to  one  if  he  ever  troubled  him- 
self to  see  again  the  thing  that  he  protected.     She  knew 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  31 

his  ways,  arid  knew  something  also  of  his  life,  though  it 
was  clothed  to  her  in  that  garb  of  fable,  with  which 
peasant  superstition  and  exaggeration  surrounded  it. 

The  child,  while  her  destiny  was  balanced  and  de- 
cided, played  with  Mistigri ;  something  stilled  by  the 
effect  the  music  had  taken  on  her,  but  carelessly  happy 
as  only  childhood  can  be,  catching  at  the  quivering  sun- 
rays  on  the  floor  with  her  hands,  and  burying  her  bright 
head  in  among  her  abundance  of  wood-lilies. 

Tricotrin,  as  he  passed  away  amid  the  old  woman's 
thanks  and  praises,  paused  a  moment  beside  his  Waif,  as 
the  monkey  leaped  up  to  his  shoulder. 

"Mademoiselle  Viva, — I  wonder  if  you  will  ever  make 
me  repent  having  taken  you  out  of  your  clematis 
coffin?" 

-Mademoiselle  Viva  laughed  where  she  lay  in  the  sun- 
shine, pulling  the  snowy  leaves  impatiently  to  pieces  of 
the  lilies  which  she  had  found  so  fair,  that  she  might 
reach  their  golden  stamens. 

"A  bad  omen!"  satd  Tricotrin.  "You  are  changeable 
and  you  are  ungrateful : — of  course  you  are,  though,  being 
feminine;  you  like  that  gold  glitter,  and  do  not  care  how 
the  lilies  die,  so  long  as  you  get  it.  How  early  your  sex 
shows  itself!" 

And  with  that  he  went  out  and  down  the  crumbling 
stairway,  singing  his  Diogine. 

"What  fools  we  are!"  he  thought.  "Love  freedom 
how  we  will,  we  are  sure  to  bind  ourselves  with  some 
unwelcome  tie — a  mistress  or  a  spaniel,  an  Art  or  a 
Waif!  Idiotcy!  The  child  would  have  gone  among  the 
foundlings  and  grown  up  into  a  grisette  or  a  nun;  and 
now — she  will  look  like  a  princess,  ami  he  reared  like  a 
peasant,  and  lease  me  I  dare  say  all  my  life  longl" 

But  pity,  rather  lor  the  Lonely  tender-souled  old  woman, 
than  for  the  stray  child,  had  moved  him  to  make  the 
promise,  and  he  would  not  draw  hack  from  it.  Besides, 
one  of  the  few  sorrows  of  his  joyous  life  had  been  when 
a  young  mothei  had  lain  dead  in  his  arms  with  all  her 
rich  gitana's  beaut}  ,  colorless  and  breal  bless,  like  a  broken 
pomegranate  flower,  and  with  hi.-  son  of  a  day's  life  dead 
too  in  her  bosom;  for  their  Bakes  he  had  pity  on  this  de- 


32  TRICOTRIN, 

serted  thing,  who  also  would  be  called  a  child  of  sin,  who 
also  might  have  vainly  striven  to  find  warmth  at  a  heart 
whose  pulse  was  still. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

The  woodland  nook  in  which  he  had  found  the  Waif, 
and  in  which  the  old  tower  stood,  was  a  piece  of  outlying 
forest-land,  between  the  vineyards  of  one  of  the  finest 
champagne  districts  of  central  France  and  the  park  of  the 
chateau  of  Villiers,  the  chief,  indeed  for  many  leagues  the 
only  great  demesne  in  those  parts.  It  was  a  noble  ancient 
place,  that  had  once  belonged  to  one  of  the  highest  races 
of  the  country,  had  passed  through  many  owners'  hands 
since  the  days  of  the  Eighty-Nine,  and  had  of  late  been 
purchased  by  the  object  of  Ninette's  homage,  under 
whose  domination  it  had  again  arisen  to  its  long  lost 
grandeur. 

The  park  was  like  to  that  of  St.  Cloud;  avenue  rising 
above  avenue  on  a  steep  hill-side,  and  Tricotrin  ascended 
its  broad  winding  roads  beneath  their  succeeding  aisles  of 
trees,  the  Beranger  chant  rising  also  higher  and  higher, 
like  the  song  of  a  lark,  as  he  mounted  the  terraced 
slopes. 

These  stretched  high  and  far;  the  forest  and  park  of 
Villiers  were  of  enormous  extent,  with  the  river  flashing 
through  them,  on  which  the  chateau  itself  looked  down 
where  it  crowned  the  crest  of  the  hill. '  Some  two  hours 
of  swift  walking  brought  him  to  the  summit,  and  into 
the  private  gardens  and  avenues  more  immediately  close 
to  the  house,  which  was  itself  a  gray  picturesque  Renais- 
sance pile,  with  many  towers,  many  angles,  much  rich 
carving,  much  beautiful  alternation  of  light  and  of 
shade. 

He  pushed  open  a  gilded  scrolled  gate,  looking  up  at 
the  blazonry  on  the  shield  of  its  archway ; — it  was  that 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  33 

of  the  arms  of  the  foreign  house  of  Estmere.      He  smiled 
as  he  saw  them;  and  went  through  into  the  gardens. 

A  young  man 'was  at  work  among  their  gorgeous 
autumnal  hlossoms. 

"Good  day,  Valentin,"  said  Tricotrin,  loitering  a  mo- 
ment.    "So  you  have  a  new  lord'/" 

"A  very  good  one,"  smiled  the  youth.  "There  is  no 
lack  of  work  here  now,  summer  or  winter." 

"Good.     And  you'have  given  up  Paris?" 

"I  have,  monsieur.  I  cannot  be  better  than  well  off; 
and  I  am  well  off  here." 

"  Quite  right.  It  is  a  mistake,  that  over-centralization. 
Every  soul  rushing  to  the  capital,  and  the  country  left  a 
desert, — it  is  as  if  all  the  blood  stayed  in  the  heart:  how 
would  the  sapless  limbs  move  then?  By-the-way, — why 
do  you  not  marry  Ninette?" 

The  young  man  colored,  and  destroyed  a  head  of 
azaleas. 

"Ninette  is  coy,  monsieur, — she  has  seen  these  grand 
people  here " 

"Pooh!  Because  you  give  the  child  time  to  think 
about  them]  She  loves  you,  Valentin,  but  she  wants  to 
be  more  entreated  to  say  so.  Women  scorn  a  timid  lover; 
though  shyness  is  the  best  tribute  to  their  own  power, 
you  can  never  get  them  to  appreciate  it," 

The  gardener  laughed  and  flushed  with  pleasure. 

"Ah!  you  know  howl  adore  her,— -the  little  coquette! 
You  know  how  my  one  desire  is  to  win  her  as  my 
wife!" 

"Well, — tell  her  that  boldly;  you  will  conquer  her. 
Give  her  a  wedding-ring  and  a  hearth  of  her  own,  and 
she  will  think  no  more;  of  the  big  people  up  at  the 
chateau." 

Valentin  laughed  happily. 

"Ah I  if  1  only  thought  she  cared  for  me " 

"Simpleton!  a  man  is  not  worth  his  salt  who  cannot 
get  the  woman  he  fancies.  Bu1  if  yon  let  little  Ninette 
think  you  only  like  her  as  well  as  you  like  Manon,  and 
Rose,  and  Jacqueline,  and  Marthe,  and  all  the  girls  of 
the  village,  why — of  course  she  will  begin  to  ponder  on 
the  'beaux  messieurs  <l<>rr.<'  up  here." 


34  TRTCOTRTN, 

Having  left  that  suggestion  to  bear  harvest  in  the  good 
gardener's  simple  sincere  soul,  Tricotrin  went  onward; 
it  was  his  way  to  scatter  seeds  of  peace,  and  content- 
ment, and  reconciliation,  and  good  counsel,  in  this  fash- 
ion, without  seeming  to  do  more  than  cast  light  words 
most  idly. 

Valentin  was  the  little  peach-seller's  first  love;  her 
fancy  had  subsequently  been  caught  by  the  glitter  of  a 
life  she  could  never  reach,  but  Tricotrin  knew  enough  of 
the  village  coquette's  honest  child-nature,  through  all  her 
vanity,  to  know  that  her  heart  remained  true  to  her  early 
lover,  and  that  she  was  of  the  temper,  when  once  under 
the  shade  of  her  own  vine,  in  the  house  of  a  husband, 
never  to  concern  herself  but  about  her  fowls,  and  her 
flowers,  and  her  Sunday  earrings,  and  her  spun  linen, 
and  the  young  children,  who  would  play  among  the  scar- 
let beans  and  yellow  gourds  of  her  garden.  So, — a 
homely,  innocent,  pleasant  life  would  be  led  in  the  fair 
grape  country,  instead  of  another  lost  one  being  added 
to  the  shoals -of  painted,  drunken,  ghastly,  greedy  lives, 
in  the  dens  of  Paris. 

Through  the  gardens,  with  their  statues  gleaming 
white  through  groves  of  yew  and  cypress,  Tricotrin 
passed  on  till  he  came  close  under  the  walls  of  the  cha- 
teau, towering  high  above  him,  quaint,  majestic,  medie- 
val, while  from  the  peaked  roof  floated  a  standard,  with 
the  arms  and  coronet  of  the  Estmeres  on  it. 

He  glanced  up  at  the  banner,  then  looked  through  a 
veil  of  flowering  creepers  that  hung  over  a  window  near 
him; — a  mullioned  window,  partially  open,  so  that  the 
chamber  within  could  be  seen.  It  was  the  old  banquet- 
ing-room  of  the  building;  freshly  restored,  with  rich 
deep  hues  of  purple,  and  the  soft  gleam  of  dead  gold,  on 
panels,  and  floor,  and  ceiling;  a  splendid  apartment,  with 
its  vast  central  table  furnished  forth  as  meals  are  set  for 
princes.  There  were  half  a  dozen  servants,  waiting  noise- 
lessly, but  there  was  only  one  guest  for  them  to  serve. 
And  he,  as  Tricotrin  first  saw  him,  made  a  motion  with 
his  hand  for  his  attendants  to  withdraw,  and  as  he  was 
left  alone  sank  back  in  his  seat  with  a  weary  languor,  his 
noon-breakfast  scarcely  tasted.    He  was  a  man  some  few 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  35 

years  younger  than  the  one  who  watched  him,  very  tall, 
Very  fair,  of  a  noble,  thoughtful,  northern  beauty  of  feat- 
ure, though  his  countenance  was  very  grave,  and  shad- 
owed with  a  look  that  had  a  restless,  bitter,  infinitely 
regretful  melancholy  on  it. 

lie  looked  like  a  man  on  whom  some  heavy  blow  had 
fallen,  and  on  whom  its  effects  still  endured,  though  striven 
against  with  all  the  strength  and  pride  of  a  haughty  and 
naturally  tranquil  temperament. 

Tricotrin  stood  unseen,  watching  him  in  his  solitude; 
and  his  eyes  grew  full  of  pity  as  he  did  so.  He  saw  that 
this  aristocrat  amid  his  greatness  was  as  weary  and  as 
desolate  as  a  royal  prisoner  of  state. 

"Ah,  Estinere  I"  he  murmured,  half  aloud.  "After  all, 
how  much  happier  am  1  than  you!" 

An  impulse  moved  him  to  go  within,  to  touch  the  hand 
that  lay  so  listlessly  beside  the  dishes  of  gold,  to  break 
the  solitude  that  amid  so  much  grandeur  was  lonely  as 
peasants  never  are  lone. 

But  though  of  a  nature  usually  impulsive,  he  restrained 
the  desire  now;  he  remained  quiet  while  gazing  through 
the  screen  of  foliage. 

"I  wish  I  could  avenge  him,"  he  thought.  "Four 
years  have  gone  by,  but  the  poisoned  wound  rankles 
still." 

lie  turned  away  at  length,  after  a  long  look,  through 
which  the  man  he  watched  never  changed  his  position, 
but  sat  motionless  and  lost  in  thought,  in  the  midst  of  his 
painted  and  velvet-hung  chamber,  on  whose  magnificence 
the  noon  sunlight  of  France  was  streaming. 

"Ah,  Mistigri !"  murmured  Tricotrin,  as  he  passed  out 
down  the  gardens,  the  one  end  of  his  visit  thither  accom- 
plished. ".Mine  is  the  better  choice.  He  is  a  prince  in 
the  purples,  but  under  his  ermine  throbs  the  jagged  nerve, 
wrenched  by  a  vile  wife's  dishonor.  You  and  1  are  hap- 
pier, little  one.  [fhe  have  his  grapes  in  a  jeweled  dish, 
we  take  ours  out  of  their  own  vine-leaves,  fresh  from  the 
vintage-feast.  II'  he  drink  his  burgundy  under  the  shadow 
of  costly  frescoes,  we  drink  ours  under  the  green  roofing 
of  summer  trees.  If  he  have  delicate  patrician  cheeks 
and   hair  diamond-studded  to  toy  with,  we   have  clicks 


36  TRICOTRIN, 

that  bloom  from  the  sun  and  the  wind,  and  hair  wreathed 
with  the  forest  bowers.  If  he  be  great — we  enjoy !  Ours 
is  the  better  portion,  Mistigri.  The  only  man  happy  is 
the  man  who  is  free.  And  the  only  man  free  is  the  man 
who  is  at  once  philosopher  and  wanderer.  '  Sans  pays, 
sans  prince,  et  sans  lois!'  His  country,  the  world, — his 
prince,  his  art, — his  law,  his  conscience  and  his  choice !" 

And  he  went  on,  chanting  once  more  the  gay  chant  of 
the  Diogene  through  the  wooded  slopes  and  down  the 
terraces,  while  the  distant  joyous  echo  of  his  voice  reached 
faintly  to  the  ear  of  the  solitary  noble  who  sat  within. 

He  heard  it ;  and  drew  a  deep  breath  that  was  almost 
a  sigh. 

"How  carelessly  that  song  sounds  1"  he  thought. 
"  Some  vintager  or  forester,  I  suppose, — but  surely  a  man 
who  is  happy!" 

And  the  great  man  in  his  palace  envied  the  careless 
singer. 


CHAPTER  V. 


By  the  side  of  the  Loire,  on  a  wooded  rock,  stood  a 
quaint  little  old  building,  picturesque,  aged,  cloister-like 
yet  cottage-like,  with  an  abundance  of  ivy  clothing  it 
from  roof  to  base,  in  which  so  manv  thousand  birds  made 
their  home  that  in  the  early  summer  the  place  seemed  one 
mass  of  fluttering  wings  and  joyous  voices.  Half  of  it 
had  been  knocked  to  ruins  in  the  Fronde;  the  other  half 
was  worth  very  little,  save  to  artists  who  loved  its  quaint 
nooks  and  angles,  and  the  splendor  of  the  panorama  which 
stretched  before  it,  of  river,  hill,  and  vineyard,  with  the 
towers  and  spires  of  Blois  in  the  golden  distance. 

One  of  its  gables  held  an  oval  deep-embrasured  win- 
dow, whose  glass  had  long  since  perished  and  been  re- 
placed by  coils  of  ivy  hanging  down  across  the  aperture. 
The  oval  hole  was  high  in  air,  in  the  topmost  stones  of 
the  coping,  beneath  its  red  high  sloping  roof;  but  it  served 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  3? 

like  a  frame  for  a  young  face  that  looked  out  from  it  very 
often.  The  face  of  a  woman-child  of  fifteen  ;  a  face  with 
the  richest  of  fair  tints,  with  a  beautiful  scarlet  mouth 
whose  corners  curled  upward,  with  great  dark  eyes  that 
were  black  with  the  soft  glowing  darkness  of  the  ante- 
lope's, with  a  profusion  of  fair  hair  tossed  backward,  and 
tied  with  a  blue  fillet,  to  fall  all  over  her  shoulders  at  its 
own  will. 

It  was  a  very  lonely  part  of  the  riverside;  Blois  was 
only  visible  on  a  sunny  day,  and  there  were  nothing  hut 
vineyards  and  peasant-proprieties  for  leagues  around. 
Yet  there  had  been  no  lack  of  the  warmest,  if  not  the 
most  flattering,  speakers,  to  tell  the  child  of  her  beauty. 

The  old  ferryman  who  would  let  her  float  for  hours  in 
his  broad  lumbering  boat;  the  country  people  who  when 
they  passed  her  on  their  way  to  market  would  check  their 
mules  and  give  her  their  largest  eggs,  brightest  fruit, 
sweetest  honey;  the  vine  laborers  who  would  look  up  to 
catch  a  glance  from  her  as  they  went  to  their  work  among 
the  grapes;  all  who  came  near  her  caressed  her,  spoiled 
her,  lavished  on  her  all  the  kindliness  and  enthusiasm  of 
their  cation,  and  christened  her  wherever  she  went  "Le 
sourire  de  la  Loire" — "  La  Fille  des  Fees."  A  nd  t  he  smile 
of  the  beautiful  laughing  river,  beside  whose  banks  all  her 
short  life  had  passed,  seemed  caught  on  her  face  in  its 
sunlight  and  beauty  where  it  looked  out  from  the  gloom 
of  the  oval  embrasure. 

She  was  listening  with  eager  expectant  pleasure,  in  the 
stillness  of  the  summer  afternoon.  All  was  quiet :  her 
friend  the  ferryman  was  mending  an  old  brown  sail  under 
the  shade  of  his  cottage,  and  the  boat  itself  was  motion- 
less, casting  a  long  shadow  across  the  water.  Some  way 
off,  some  children  in  little  blue  blouses  were  playing  under 
a  sycamore  with  a  greal  gourd  they  could  hardly  roll. 
Very  far  down  the  stream  there  was  a  barge,  drifting 
lazily,  with  a  load  of  hay,  on  which  the  men  who  had 
mown  it  were  stretched  sound  asleep  in  the  calm  and  the 
heat. 

At  every  point  where  her  eyes  glanced  there  was  a 
picture  of  exquisite  color,  and  light,  and  variety. 

Bui  the  scene  in  its  loveliness  was  so  old  to  her,  SO  fa- 

4 


38  TRICOTRIN, 

miliar,  that  it  was  scarcely  lovely;  only  monotonous. 
With  all  a  child's  usual  ignorant  impatience  of  the  joys 
of  the  present — -joys  so  little  valued  at  the  time,  so  futilely 
regretted  in  the  after-years  —  she  was  heedless  of  the 
hour's  pleasure,  she  was  longing  for  what  had  not  come. 

Round  a  bend  in  the  river  a  rowing  boat  came  in  sight. 
The  long  straight  stroke  of  oars  in  powerful  hands  sent 
the  little  thing  swiftly  forward  with  pleasant  and  even 
pace.  At  times  it  loitered  while  the  rower  let  his  sculls 
lie  at  rest  and  gazed  in  peaceful  indolence  down  the  rush 
of  the  stream.  At  times  he  brought  it  onward,  gently 
and  easily,  down  the  rapid  current  through  the  hot  and 
fragrant  day,  between  the  landscapes  of  the  vine  hung 
banks.  Every  now  and  then,  from  under  the  shade  of  his 
sombrero,  his  eyes  glanced  up  at  the  distant  cottage 
smothered  in  its  chestnuts  and  its  cork-trees;  and  with 
the  ripple  of  the  waters  his  voice  sung  to  the  rhythm  of  a 
Venice  barcarolle,  a  rowing  song  of  Turkish  boatmen. 
The  Allah  hu!  of  the  Golden  Horn  went  echoing  softly 
over  the  width  of  the  Loire ;  and  the  bargemen  looked  up 
from  their  indolent  rest  in  the  hay,  and  the  children  left 
off  their  game  with  the  gourd,  and  the  old  ferryman 
dropped  the  heavy  end  of  his  sail  to  shade  his  eyes  from 
the  sun  with  one  hand,  as  they  heard  the  song,  and  saw 
the  boat,  and  smiled  with  one  accord: — for  it  was  Trico- 
trin. 

The  child  saw  and  heard  too ;  laughed  with  delight ; 
balanced  herself  with  an  upward  agile  spring  till  her  foot 
rested  on  the  stone  coping  of  her  window-seat;  and  leap- 
ing lightly  down  off  the  jutting  stones  that  formed  a  sort 
of  crazed  and  crumbling  irregular  stairway  from  her  case- 
ment to  the  ground,  ran  as  fleetly  as  a  young  deer  down 
the  slope  to  the  river-bank,  and  reached  it  just  as  the 
boat-keel  grated  there. 

"Viva!" 

He  passed  his  hand  over  her  hair  with  a  tender  caress 
as  she  threw  her  arms  about  him  with  the  abandonment 
and  welcome  of  an  ardent,  graceful  child,  lifting  her  lovely 
mouth,  like  a  red  camellia  bud,  up  for  the  kiss  which  he 
gave  it  lightly. 

"Viva!"  he  cried,  "of  a  surety  you  have  the  most  in- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  39 

herent  pertinacity  in  living  of  any  creature  ever  born! 
Nothing  but  a  chamois — or  a  Waif — could  have  sprung 
down  that  wall  by  the  jutting  stones.  You  have  a  mar- 
velous trick  of  thriving  on  what  would  have  killed  any 
other.     Still — tant  va  la  cruche  a  Veau,  etc.    Take  care!" 

Viva  laughed  up  in  his  face. 

"If  I  had  fallen,  you  would  have  been  there  !  What 
matter  then?" 

"But — I  may  not  be  'there'  always!  Do  not  lean  on 
a  reed,  little  one.  To  depend  on  another  is  to  walk  upon 
crutches :  and  the  best  crutch  is  but  a  sorry  exchange  for 
sound  limbs.  Ah  !  Mistigri  wants  to  get  at  you ;  take 
her.     And  you  have  been  well  all  this  while?" 

"Why!  I  am  always  well!"  laughed  the  child  in  the 
exultant  security  of  her  own  perfect  strength  and  health. 
"I  do  not  think  I  know  what  pain  is.  But  for  what  a 
long  time  you  have  been  away !  I  thought  you  would 
never  come  I" 

Tricotrin  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Mignonne, — I  cannot  let  even  a  Waif  be  a  tie.  I  have 
enjoyed  myself;  and  so  have  you,  I  do  not  doubt?" 

"Oh,  I  enjoy  myself,"  answered  the  child,  with  a  cer- 
tain disdain  for  the  fact.  "But  Adele  says  it  is  'provin- 
cial' to  enjoy." 

"And  who  may  this  kill-joy  and  cynic  of  an  Adele  be, 
I  pray  you?" 

"She  is  at  the  convent; — a  noble's  daughter,"  said  the 
Waif,  still  clinging  to  him  with  one  hand,  while  she  held 
Mistigri  with  the  other.  "  But  I  forgot — you  must  be 
tired;  you  must  want  to  eat?" 

"Tired? — no.  Hungry? — yes.  I  have  been  rowing 
three  leagues,  and  have  had  only  a  draught  of  red  wine 
on  the  way.  Have  you  anything  in  your  larder,  little 
one?" 

"Oh  yes!  There  is  some  -alette,  and  plenty  of  chest- 
nuts; and  a  guinea-hen,  though  I  am  afraid  she  is  a  little 
old,  and  some  fruit." 

'•  Enough  !     It  is  a  supper  for  a  king." 

"  You  will  come  in  now  ?" 

"To  gel  it? — yes.  To  eat  it? — passibite!  Never 
spend  time  indoors  when  you  can  spend  it  out  of  doors. 


40  TRICOTRIN, 

Stay.  Run  and  bring  me  something,  while  I  fasten  the 
boat.  Grand'mere  is  washing,  I  see ;  that  is  a  sacred 
and  solemn  business.  Tell  her  I  will  see  her  later  on, 
when  the  linen  shall  have  reposed  in  peace." 

The  child  flew  off  on  her  errand,  the  cloud  of  her  fair 
hair  flying  behind  her  on  the  wind,  to  where  the  little 
figure  of  the  old  peasant  woman,  older  but  none  the  less 
active,  bent  over  a  great  washing-tub  among  the  scarlet- 
flowering  beans  of  her  garden.  Grand'mere  had  grown 
deaf,  and  the  height  of  the  beans  had  prevented  her  seeing 
the  arrival. 

Tricotrin  dragged  his  boat  up  on  the  bank,  high  and 
dry  upon  the  grass,  fastened  it  to  a  tree,  and  had  only 
just  finished  tying  the  rope  when  his  Waif  returned  with 
both  hands  laden;  the  sunshine  like  a  halo  of  gold  round 
her  head,  her  face  beaming  with  delight,  and  the  warmth 
of  the  day  and  the  kiss  of  the  wind. 

"This  is  all  I  can  find.  Will  that  do?  That  gray  cat 
of  Sarazin's  has  stolen  the  fowl,"  she  said,  as  he  hastened 
to  take  her  burden  from  her,  with  the  courtesy  he  would 
sooner  have  omitted  to  a  queen  than  to  a  foundling. 

"Do  ?  It  is  a  meal  for  the  gods  !  But  you  are  femi- 
nine, Viva ;  it  is  not  for  you  to  serve  me." 

"I  would  serve  none  but  you." 

"Verily?  Then  you  are  wrong,  my  child.  You  should 
serve  all  the  old  and  the  poor.  Nevertheless,  I  thank 
you  for  your  preference.  And  now — let  us  go  to  your 
favorite  tree." 

The  tree  was  at  some  little  distance  from  the  cottage 
where  he  had  placed  his  Waif  and  her  guardian, — a  huge 
old  beech-tree  with  wide-stretching  arms  of  shelter  and 
welcome,  and  moss-lined  couches  in  the  depths  of  its 
great  trunk,  and  abovehead  a  broad  crown  of  fresh  green 
leaf.  The  tree  stood  some  way  from  the  river,  yet  close 
enough  for  all  the  babble  of  the  water  to  be  heard  amid 
the  deep-grown  woodland  wilderness  that  surrounded  it; 
woodland  ending  only  where  the  vineyards  met  it. 

And  here,  in  the  hollows  of  the  massive  boles,  was  the 
Waif's  favorite  throne;  a  throne  where  the  child  would 
sit  through  many  sunny  hours,  watching  the  birds'  flight, 
and  the  movement  of  the  insects  in  the  blue  depths  of 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  41 

the  aconite  and  the  purple  glories  of  the  gorgeous  bella- 
donna; a  throne  without  one  care  in  its  eminence,  one 
cruelty  in  its  embrace. 

Twelve  years  had  passed  by  since  the  Waif  had  been 
found  among  the  clematis ;  and  those  twelve  years  had 
been  full  of  the  long,  sweet,  spontaneous  pleasures  of 
childhood.  True,  she  lived  simply  in  a  river-side  cottage, 
with  an  old  and  unlearned  woman  for  her  only  compan- 
ion, whose  chief  cares  were  the  eternal  wants  of  the  pot 
au  feu,  and  the  health  of  the  hens  scratching  in  the  gar- 
den. Hut  then  that  old  woman  loved  her  with  a  passionate 
and  most  tender  adoration;  that  cottage,  with  its  little 
chambers  that  were  like  so  many  interiors  of  Teniers  and 
Van  Tol's,  was  the  only  home  she  knew.  Fruits  and 
flowers,  and  the  singing  of  birds  and  of  waters,  and  the 
picturesque  life  of  the  vine-fields,  and  the  plenteous  joy 
of  the  harvests,  made  up  the  golden  sum  of  her  young 
days;  and  from  the  night-time,  when  she  fell  asleep  in 
her  little  while  nest  under  the  eaves,  with  prayers  mut- 
tered above  her,  to  the  sunrise  when  she  awoke,  full  of 
eagerness  for  the  unworn  innocent  hours  that  the  mere 
sense  of  existence  made  sweet  to  her  as  they  are  sweet 
to  the  young  birds  thrusting  themselves  forth  in  the 
spring-tide,  Viva  had  led  the  pure  brighl  life  of  a  child  in 
the  country,  and  been  happy  in  it  as  only  children  are. 

She  had  thriven  with  marvelous  perfection,  as  though 
in  rebellion  against  1  he  fate  |  hat  had  cast  her  out  to  perish. 
She  had  grown  in  grace  and  strength  on  her  hard  brown 
bread  and  her  draught  of  goat's  milk,  as  kings' daughters 
will  not  thrive  in  palaces.  She  had  sprung  up  radiant, 
lovely,  laughing,  fearless,  under  the  shelter  of  the  crum- 
bling roof,  as  a  plume  of  golden-rod  will  blossom  under 
the  leaning  wall  of  a  ruin.  And  he  who  had  firsl  taken 
pity  on  her,  had  never  since  that  hour  deserted  her. 

lie    had   seen   her   at    intervals,  —  widely  distant    ones 

for  several  years,  closer  to  each  other  as  she  grew  older; 

but  wherever  he  wandered,  however  long  he  was  absent, 

the  old  dame.   Virelois,  was  always  certain   that  twice   in 

the  year  would  come,  as  sure  as  seed-time  and  reaping- 

time,  the  -um  which  he  had  promised  her,  to  succor  her 

poverty  and  maintain  the  Waif. 

4* 


42  TRICOTRIN, 

The  child  knew  her  history;  he  forbade  her  to  be  kept 
in  secret  of  it.  Nothing  had  ever  been  learned  that  could 
give  a  clew  to  the  origin  of  her  birth,  or  the  motive  of  her 
abandonment ;  and  Viva,  fed  on  fairy-lore  by  her  foster- 
mother,  believed  herself  devoutly  the  offspring  of  elfin 
loves.     She  delighted  to  think  herself  not  wholly  mortal. 

Any  sense  of  shame,  or  of  desolation,  had  never  been 
permitted  to  touch  her ;  and  the  kindly-natured  peasantry 
of  the  district,  sharing  a  little  too  in  her  own  view  of  her 
fairy-parentage,  caressed  her,  admired  her,  and  treated 
her  with  a  sort  of  homage  that  was  due,  partly  to  her 
own  exceeding  beauty,  and  partly  to  the  reverent  love  in 
which  they  held  her  protector;  and  which  did  its  utter- 
most to  turn  her  childish  head  with  vanity  and  willful- 
ness, and  persuade  her  that  she  was  of  very  different 
mould  to  the  common,  sun-burnt,  toil-marked  clay  around 
her.  For  Viva — a  Waif  and  Stray,  nameless  and  home- 
less, found  wrapped  in  a  bit  of  red  serge,  and  saved  by  a 
monkey  stretching  out  a  little  horny,  black  hand — was 
as  proud  as  though  the  blood  of  all  the  Caesars  had 
warmed  her  clear  rosy  cheeks. 

The  pride  was  fostered  in  her  by  many  things:  by  the 
adulation  of  grand'mere,  who  incessantly  fondled  her,  as 
something  beyond  earth  in  her  loveliness ;  by  the  defer- 
ence, of  the  few  people  whom  she  ever  saw,  to  the  charms 
and  caprices  of  her  graceful  infancy;  by  the  ignorance 
even  of  her  own  origin,  which  left  her  parentage  a  blank 
that  could  be  filled  up  by  imagination  with  every  gor- 
geous and  wondrous  picture.  This  wayward  and  base- 
less pride  had  been  nourished  by  every  creature  who  ap- 
proached her,  save  one ;  and  that  one  Viva  loved  better 
than  all  others. 

All  the  child's  affectionate,  wayward,  contradictory  little 
soul  spent  itself  in  love  for  Tricotrin.  All  she  had  that 
pleased  her, — the  blue  ribbon  for  her  hair,  the  bonbons 
in  their  silvered  papers,  the  music  that  told  her  of  such 
entrancing  fables  of  unknown  worlds,  the  pretty  ivory 
chain  that  hung  round  her  neck  which  was  as  white  as 
itself, — all  came  to  her  from  his  hands,  for  though  with- 
out riches  himself,  he  could  give  what  seemed  riches  to 
the  fancy  of  a  young  lonely  creature;  and  he  who  ab- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  43 

horred  a  tie — even  a  tie  of  love — had  grown  to  feel  an 
irresistible  fondness  for  the  thing  whose  life  he  had  saved. 
Such  fondness  as  was  but  an  instinct  with  the  warm,  lib- 
eral, compassionate  heart  of  the  man  for  a  being  so  utterly 
dependent  on  him. 

The  life  that  lay  behind  him  had  been  filled  with  many 
loves.  His  painter's  eyes  and  poet's  fancy  had  seen 
beauty  in  many  female  forms,  under  the  suns  of  many 
lands;  but  nothing  purer,  and  in  its  way,  nothing  deeper, 
had  ever  touched  him  than  the  tenderness  that  he  had 
given  his  Waif.  lie  had  saved  her  as  he  would  have 
saved  a  wood-pigeon  from  the  trap,  a  hare  from  the  netted 
snare,  and  had  thought  to  concern  himself  no  more  with 
her  than  with  the  pigeon  that  flew,  or  with  the  bare  that 
fled,  away  from  him,  rejoicing  in  release.  But  in  his  own 
fashion  Tricotrin,  who  acknowledged  no  law  but  his  con- 
science, obeyed  what  he  deemed  duty,  even  when  obe- 
dience went  hardly  against  him;  and,  to  his  own  thinking, 
having  brought  this  existence  out  from  the  death  that 
had  been  assigned  to  it,  lie  had  a  right  bound  upon  him 
to  see  how  it  fared,  and  into  what  semblance  it  grew. 

lb'  loved  the  vine  countries  well,  and  with  most  grape- 
harvests  came  to  them.  Thus  he  had  never  wholly  lost 
sight  of  his  foundling;  and  Viva  adored  him  with  a  pas- 
sionate faith  and  reverence  that  she  yielded  to  no  one 
else,  and  which  was  rather  increased  than  diminished  by 
the  rarity  of  his  presence  and  the  uncertainty  of  his  visits. 
For  these  invested  him  in  Viva's  eyes  with  1  he  grandeur 
(if  a,  king  in  disguise,  and  the  miraculous  advent  of  one 
who  was  not  as  ol  her  men  are. 

On  the  whole,  the  Waif  fared  better,  having  fallen  to 
the  hands  of  a  vagabond-philosopher,  than  if  she  had 
drifted  to  those  of  a  respected  philanthropist.  The  latter 
would  have  had  her  glistening  hair  shorn  short,  as  a 
crown  with  which  that  immoral  and  inconsistenl  socialist, 
Nature  hail  no  justification  in  crowning  a  foundling ;  and, 
in  his  desire  to  make  her  fully  expiate  the  lawless  crime 
of  entering  the  world  without  purse  or  passport,  would 
have  left  her  no  choice,  as  .-lie  grew  into  womanhood, 
save  that  between  sinning  and  starving.  The  former 
bade  the  long  fair  tresses  float  on  the  air,  sunns  reb<  Is 


44  TRICOTRIN, 

against  bondage,  and  saw  no  reason  why  the  childhood 
of  the  castaway  should  not  have  its  share  of  childish  joy- 
ousness  as  well  as  the  childhood  prince-begotten  and 
palace-cradled;  holding  that  the  fresh  life  just  budded  on 
earth  was  as  free  from  all  soil,  no  matter  whence  it  came, 
as  is  the  brook  of  pure  rivulet-water,  no  matter  whether 
it  springs  from  classic  lake  or  from  darksome  cavern. 

"A  meal  for  the  gods!"  said  Tricotrin,  taking  out  the 
contents  of  Yiva's  basket.  "  Figs,  pears,  a  melon,  and 
white  bread!  Why,  extravagant  one,  what  were  you 
dreaming  of,  to  apologize  for  such  a  fair  feast  ?  Horace 
could  not  have  wanted  a  better.  This  is  my  fiambr eras, 
as  the  good  Knight  of  Mancha  phrased  it.  But  the  Don 
consoled  himself  for  short  commons  with  a  long  name  and 
a  vast  show.  We  are  wiser  than  that.  We  have  the 
fruits  of  the  earth,  without  bombast " 

"I  wish  there  were  something  better  though!  That 
cat  is  such  a  thief!"  said  the  Waif  with  a  sigh,  looking 
down  on  him  from  where  she  was  sitting  aloft  in  the 
curved  trunk  of  the  huge  beech-tree. 

"Better?  foolish  child!  Ask  Mistigri.  There  could 
be  nothing  better  when  I  add  my  flask  of  wine,  which  it 
never  does  to  leave  to  chance.  Here  is  honey,  sweet  as 
that  of  Hymettus;  bread  to  be  the  prose  of  corn  to  the 
poetry  of  fruit;  and  Rhenish  that  Schiller  loved,  with  all 
the  Rhine  legends  steeped  in  it.  I  would  not  change 
these,  for  all  the  cooks  whose  art  consists  in  leaving  you 
in  ignorance  as  to  whether  you  are  eating  fish,  flesh,  or 
fowl.  And  now,  since  it  is  no  fun  to  look  on  at  others' 
meals,  and  you  say  you  have  had  your  own,  try  some 
bonbons,  ma  mie!" 

He  tossed  upward  to  her  as  he  spoke  several  bright- 
colored  packets  of  sweetmeats,  gilded  and  silvered  in  the 
floral  French  fashion ;  and  Viva  caught  each  in  its  tarn  with 
a  laugh  of  delight.  She  had  just  fifteen  years,  but  she  was 
a  true  child  in  heart,  and  if  her  mother  had  been  a  fairy, 
that  fairy  must  have  been  French. 

"I  am  glad  they  please  you,"  said  Tricotrin,  looking 
up  to  catch  the  smile  on  her  face  where  it  beamed  down 
on  him  through  the  beech-leaves.  "Up  at  Blois  last 
night  Madame  Dentree's  daughter  was  married.     There 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  45 

was  a  grand  bridal  feast,  of  course.  She  has  wedded 
well,  to  a  rich  young  tanner  of  Sevres,  and  I  played  for 
them  till  the  dawn.  Dieu!  how  they  danced ! — all  those 
young  men  and  maidens.  The  mother  was  pleased,  and 
this  morning  she  would  have  emptied  half  her  bonbon- 
shop  on  me  for  you.  She  is  a  good  woman,  the  Dentree, 
and  a  rich  tanner  is  a  son-in-law  to  put  one  in  good 
humor." 

"I  have  never  been  to  Blois,"  murmured  the  Waif, 
bending  over  her  cornucopias  of  sweetmeats,  which, 
though  she  would  not  have  said  so,  were  a  little  embit- 
tered to  her  by  being  the  gifts  of  a  pastry  cook. 

"  No.  Keep  out  of  cities  while  you  can.  The  range 
of  old  Saraziirs  ferryboat  is  far  enough  for  your  wan- 
derings at  present.  And  how  do  you  agree  with  the 
Sisters?'' 

"I  hate  them!"  said  the  child,  with  flashing  eyes. 

"And  wherefore?" 

"Oh! — they  hate  me,"  murmured  Viva. 

"Indeed?    Then  I  fear  you  musl  deserve  it?" 

"I  dare  say  I  do.  They  are  so  silent,  so  lifeless,  so 
cold,  so  gray;  there  is  no  good  in  them!  I  love  light, 
warmth,  laughter,  color, — you  know!  — and  they  talk 
folly,  they  say  these  are  all  vanity,  that  life  should  be 
one  long  psalm  of  humility,  and  denial,  and  sacrifice. 
Bah!  it  would  be  like  living  to  wear  tight  bands  of 
irons!" 

"And  you  have  a  preference  for  rose-chains?  Well — 
you  and  I  he  Sisters  look  at  lite  with  the  difference  of  eyes 
that  have  only  been  open  for  fifteen  years,  ami  eyes  that 
have  ached  wearily  for  forty-five.  A  great  contrast  in 
vision, — that  I" 

"But  you  are  forty-live?" 

'•And  more.  But  I  am  a  man,  and  any  man  who  is 
not  a  fool  or  a  criminal,  can  keep  youth  in  him  all  the 
days  of  his  life.  But  women! — ami  women  behind  the 
iron  bars  of  a  gratingl  Hut  yon  only  -■<>  in  the  convenl 
to  learn.  Viva;  why  should  you  vex  your  soul  at  cap- 
tivity you  do  m»t  share?" 

"Why?"  replied  1  he  child,  her  pretty  glad  voice  grow- 
ing swifter  and  more  eager.   "They  are  forever  rebuking 


46  TRICOTRIN, 

me, — not  for  learning;  I  will  learn,  though  I  abhor  it, 
because  you  wish  me,  and  because  you  say  that  knowl- 
edge is  power, — but  for  frivolity  as  they  call  it,  and  im- 
petuosity, and  willfulness,  and  giddiness,  and  pride! 
They  tell  me  I  should  be  patient,  and  quiet,  and  lowly 
in  mind,  and  as  one  in  servitude  always;  that  I  have  no 
right  to  be  proud,  and  ought  to  think  a  vine-dresser  as 
good  as  myself;  that  to  be  plain  and  virtuous  is  lovelier 
to  God  than  to  be  handsome  and  wayward  as  I  am  ! — 
that — oh!  I  could  tell  you  for  hours  the  tedious  things 
that  they  lecture  me  on  ! " 

"Humph!  So  you  are  conscious  of  beauty,  wayward- 
ness, pride,  and  frwolity,  my  friend?  A  nice  quartette 
of  qualities?  'Know  thyself,' said  the  sage;  certainly 
you  obey  him." 

"  But  that  is  not  all !"  cried  Viva,  with  burning  cheeks, 
and  eyes  to  which  proud  passionate  tears  started.  "  There 
are  two  or  three  children  there — that  Adele  is  one  of 
them,  a  count's  daughter! — and  they  are  awkward,  and 
heavy,  and  ungraceful  in  everything,  yet  they  think  them- 
selves above  me!  And  they  are  rude  —  very  rude  — 
grand'mere  says  because  they  are  jealous  of  me;  and 
they  laughed  in  my  face  when  I  told  them  my  mother 
was  a  fairy,  and  they  twit  me  with  having  no  name,  with 
being  only — as  they  say — a  thing  that  is  called  Viva,  like 
a  cat  or  a  clog!" 

She  threw  back  her  head  while  she  uttered  the  words 
that  had  wounded  her,  as  though  in  haughty  repellance 
of  their  power  to  sting.  Nor  indeed  did  they  pierce  with 
the  humiliation  which  she  would  have  felt  had  she  not 
been  guarded  from  all  knowledge  of  possible  shame  in 
her  birth,  and  had  not  her  fancy-fed  imagination  genu- 
inely believed  the  fantastic  story  of  fairy  origin,  that 
grand'mere  had  woven  to  satisfy  her  eager  questionings 
without  pain. 

Trieotrin  looked  up  at  her,  and  a  smile  of  tender  and 
infinite  pity  came  on  his  lips. 

"So  soon!"  he  murmured  to  himself.  "  They  might 
let  you  enjoy  your  bright  brief  dawn;  it  will  swiftly  be 
over!  So  the  children  cast  shame  ere  they  should  know 
what  shame  is!  We  cannot  wonder  at  the  great  world, 
then." 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  4? 

"Viva  mine,"  he  said  aloud  at  length.  "As  for  the 
Sisters'  offenses,  they  are  nothing, — the  good  women 
mean  well  by  you,  and  you  have  such  willfulness  and 
pride,  ma  mie,  that  you  may  well  hear  with  some  few 
sermons  on  your  besetting  sin.  But  for  the  rest,  since 
you  are  proud  do  you  not  know  that  the  proud  never  let 
the  barbed  shafts  of  malicious  tongues  wound  them?  The 
words  which  hurt  you  are  words  of  jealous  mouths,  you 
think;  well,  do  you  not  know  that  jealousy  is,  and  lias 
been  from  all  time,  a  liar  and  a  slanderer ?" 

The  child  looked  softly  at  him. 

"But  it  is  true?  1  have  no  name  ?  I  am  not  as  others 
are  ?" 

The  fairy  fabric  of  her  elfin  birth,  although  so  devoutly 
and  innocently  believed  in,  was  not  wholly  proof  againsl 
the  scoff  and  the  taunt  which  had  moved  her.  Already 
Viva  was  beginning  to  feel  the  power  of  thai  impalpable 
tyrant  of  "the  world" — embodied  for  her  in  the  small 
form  of  a  little  French  girl,  with  a  shrill  mocking  voice, 
and  a  "de  la"  appended  to  her  name  in  voucher  of 
nobility. 

Tricotrin  looked  at  her  with  pitying  tenderness. 

"Not  as  others?  Why.  my  Waif?  Is  your  foot  less 
swift,  your  limb  less  strong,  your  face  less  fair,  than 
theirs?  Does  the  sun  shine  less  often,  have  the  flowers 
less  fragrance,  does  sleep  come  less  sweetly,  to  you  than 
to  them?  Nature  has  been  very  good,  very  generous  to 
you,  Viva.  Be  conient  with  her  gifts.  What  you  lack 
i>  only  a  thing  of  man's  invention,  a  quibble,  a  bauble,  a 
pharisee's  phylactery.  Look  at  the  river-lilies  that  drift 
yonder,  how  white  they  are,  how  their  leaves  inclose  and 
caress  them,  how  the  water  buoys  them  up  and  plays 
with  them  I  Well?  are  they  not  better  off  than  the  poor 
rare  flowers  that  live  painfully  in  hothouse  air,  and  are 
labeled.  ;i!id  matted,  and  given  long  names  by  men's 
petty  precise  laws?  Von  are  like  the  river-lilies;  oh 
child  !  do  not  pine  for  the  glass  house  that  would  ennoble 
yon.  only  to  force  you.  am!  kill  you!" 

Viva  smihd.  following  with  quick  fancy  the  picturesque 
metaphor;  but  she  was  not  wholly  content  to  be  a  river- 
llower,  she   wanted  to  bloom   under   the  silver   .-pray  of 


48  TRICOTRIN, 

palace  fountains:  she  hung  her  graceful  head  on  one 
side,  in  half  arch,  half  pensive  meditation. 

"But — it  is  not  pleasant  to  have  no  name.  Only  a 
nickname  that  means  nothing;  like  the  kitten  Bebe,  like 
the  cock  Boi  Dore? " 

Tricotrin's  humorous  smile  laughed  on  his  lips;  he  had 
struck  on  a  vein  of  amused  thought  that  wandered  away 
from  herself. 

"Is  it  not?"  he  laughed  in  answer.  "Ask  Bebe  and 
Roi  Dore; — they  will  tell  you  that  so  long  as  the  voices 
they  love  call  them,  and  the  name  serves  to  summon 
them  to  good  food  and  good  drink,  it  answers  every  pur- 
pose that  a  king's  string  of  titles  can  do.  Bah! "little 
one!  Be  more  of  a  philosopher.  A  name  is  a  handle 
only ;  if  the  pot  go  soundly  to  the  well,  and  if  it  bring 
back  cool  pure  water  for  thirsty  mouths,  what  matter 
how  the  handle  be  fashioned?" 

ViVa,  accustomed  to  follow  and  catch  the  fantastic 
meanings  of  his  phrases,  knew  well  what  he  meant,  but 
was  not  prepared  to  be  convinced  by  it:  she  had  a 
strongly-developed  will  of  her  own. 

"That  may  be,"  she  said,  with  a  charming  mutinous 
pout  of  her  lovely  lips.  "Still — when  one  is  a  pretty 
porcelain  pot  it 'is  ugly  to  have  a  broken  osier  handle, 
and  to  only  go  to  the  well  as  if  one  were  of  brown  old 
earthenware  ?" 

Tricotrin  laughed  more  and  more. 

"So  you  think  yourself  of  pretty  porcelain,  my  dainty 
little  bit  of  Sevres?  oh-he!  Well!  I  will  warrant  you 
will  never  be  of  so  much  use  to  others  as  if  you  were  a 
homely  brown  pipkin.  But  to  be  proud  of  your  useless- 
ness  is  a  thing  that  has  not  my  sympathies." 

The  child  colored ;  conscious  of  the  satire  and  of  the 
rebuke. 

"There  is  no  pipkin  that  would  not  change,  and  be 
porcelain,  if  it  could!"  she  murmured,  with  a  certain 
pleading  petulance. 

"Well — that  does  not  say  much  for  the  good  sense  of 
the  pipkins  then,  if  it  be  true.  But  1  don't  think  it  is 
true.  There  is  many  a  sturdy,  honest,  sensible  pipkin 
that  would  rather  be  going  to  the  well  twenty  times  a 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  49 

day,  to  have  the  children's  thirsty  throats,  and  the  hot 
window-flowers,  and  the  poor  chained  clogs,  and  the  lit- 
tle feverish  birds  in  cages,  all  grateful  to  it,  and  made 
happy  by  what  it  brings,  than  it  would  be  a  porcelain 
trifle,  standing  all  the  year  round  in  a  velvet-lined  cabi- 
net, only  valued  for  the  paint  on  its  glaze,  and  liable  any 
minute  to  be  bought  and  sold  as  a  chattel.  I  would 
rather  be  the  pipkin,  Viva  ;  but  you,  I  suppose,  sigh  for 
captivity  and  idleness  among  a  collector's  brie  a  brae?" 

The  child  laughed  too,  but  she  gave  a  little  quick  sigh, 
and  a  hot  flush  for  her  chidden  vanity  and  her  own  sense 
of  its  unwisdom. 

"But  is  it  so  wrong  to  be  proud?"  she  asked,  dropping, 
female-like,  the  pipkin  and  porcelain  symbol,  so  soon  as 
she  found  it  tell  against  her  own  argument. 

"Proud  ?     In  what  way,  Viva?" 

"Any  way!  To  be  impatient  of  grand'mere's  friends 
because  they  talk  such  bad  patois,  and  are  only  old 
ignorant  women!  To  burn  with  hatred,  and  jealousy, 
and  evil,  at  my  first  communion,  because  that  Adele  had 
a  wreath  on  of  real  silver,  and  scoffed  at  my  beautiful 
lilies  and  lilacs  because  they  were  only  real  flowers!" — 

tltOnly.n"  murmured  Tricotrin. 

"To  be  full  of  wrath  with  dear  old  grand'mere  because 
she  will  bake,  and  wash,  and  sweep,  though  I  know  it  is 
so  good  of  her  to  do  it!  To  be  wayward  and  bitter,  and 
long  to  avenge,  when  the  children  talk  at  me  as  though 
I  were  a  peasant!  To  loathe  to  confess  it  when  I  know 
I  am  wrong;  to  long  for  sovereignty,  and  supremacy, 
and  luxury,  and  power;  to  feel  1  would  die  rather  than 
serve;  and  to  disdain  anything  that  is  poor,  and  ugly, 
and  meek,  and  without  grace!  Oh,  how  proud  in  all  ways 
and  al  all  hoursl" 

Tricotrin  smiled  as  he  heard  her  self-accusation,  but  he 
looked  at  her  mournfully. 

"Viva  mine,  you  are  not  a  philosopher:  but  it  is  a 
little  early  perhaps  lor  that,  and  besides,  nothing  feminine 
ever  was,  1  suppose.  Wrong  to  ho  proud,  yon  ask?  No. 
But  then  the  pride  musl  lie  of  a  right  fashion.  It  musl 
be  the  pride  which  savs,  'Let  me  not  envy,  for  that  were 

5 


50  TRICOTRIN, 

meanness.  Let  me  not  covet,  for  that  were  akin  to  theft. 
Let  me  not  repine,  for  that  were  weakness.'  It  must  be 
the  pride  which  says,  '  I  can  be  sufficient  for  myself.  My 
life  makes  my  nobility.  And  I  need  no  accident  of  rank, 
because  I  have  a  stainless  honor.'  It  must  be  pride,  too 
proud  to  let  an  aged  woman  work  where  youthful  limbs 
can  help  ber;  too  proud  to  trample  basely  on  what  lies 
low  already ;  too  proud  to  be  a  coward,  and  shrink  from 
following  conscience  in  the  confession  of  known  error; 
too  proud  to  despise  the  withered,  toil-worn  hands  of 
the  poor  and  old,  and  be  vilely  forgetful  that  those 
hands  succored  you  in  your  utmost  need  of  helpless 
infancy!" 

The  sweet  melodious  tones  of  his  voice,  that  grew  in- 
finitely gentle,  almost  solemn,  as  the  last  words  left  his 
lips,  went  straight  to  the  loving,  wayward  heai't  of  the 
child  they  rebuked.  She  threw  herself  down  beside  him 
in  lowly  passionate  repentance;  her  fair  face  burning 
with  contrition,  her  mouth  trembling,  her  eyes  brimming 
with  great  tears. 

"Oh  yes,  yes!  If  they  would  only  speak  .so,  I  would 
listen!  I  am  wrong,  I  am  rebellious,  1  am  wicked,  and 
I  care  too  much  for  the  things  that  are  vain ;  but  indeed, 
indeed,  I  am  never  ungrateful!" 

Tricotrin,  who  would  at  any  moment  have  sooner 
faced  a  flaming  city,  or  a  swarming  barricade,  than  seen 
the  tears  of  anything  feminine,  above  all  of  anything  he 
loved,  passed  his  hand  over  her  hair  with  a  caress. 

"To  be  sure  not!"  he  said  cheerily.'  "No  one  sus- 
pects you  of  such  baseness!  As  for  your  desire  for 
sovereignty, — believe  me  there  is  none  like  the  royalty 
of  youth.  Rejoice  in  that  kingdom  while  it  is  yours;  it 
will  pass  from  you  all  too  soon.  And,  for  'the  things 
that  are  vain,' — you  are  feminine,  as  I  say,  and  must 
love  them  I  suppose  according  to  your  sex.  But  if  you 
think  a  wreath  of  beaten-out  metal  produced  from  a  jew- 
eler's workshop  equals  the  lilies  and  lilacs  of  a  spring- 
blossoming  earth,  why, — you  arc  no  artist,  my  Waif,  but 
a  creature  of  acquired  tastes,  and  innate  vulgarities,  as, 
judging  by  their  choice  of  appareling,  I  often  fear  tba,t 
all  women  arc!" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  '         51 

The  child  laughed,  but  her  tears  were  still  on  her  long, 
curling  lashes,  and  the  words  he  had  spoken  had  sunk 
into  her  heart. 

She  was  silent,  and  he  let  her  be  so  while  she  lay  at 
his  feet,  her  arms  cushioned  on  the  moss,  and  her  head 
drooped  on  her  hands,  in  the  unconscious  grace  of  a 
young  resting  stag. 

"Proud  as  a  queen,  and  among  the  base-born.  Lovely 
as  the  dawn,  and  without  a  mother  or  a  name.  Willing 
to  perish  rather  than  yield,  and  a  woman!  It  needs  no 
horoscope  to  cast  her  fate!"  murmured  Tricotrin  in 
English  to  the  monkey,  the  language  being  one  unin- 
telligible to  Viva,  though  familiar  to  him.  "Ah  Mistigri, 
Mistigri!  shall  you  and  I  ever  be  reproached  at  the  last? 
Had  we  better  have  let  the  thread  of  life  be  broken  at  the 
onset  than  have  saved  it  to  reel  out,  all  glistening  gold  at 
first,  all  knotted  tangles  at  the  end?  Porcelain? — yes! 
Such  delicate,  dainty,  bright-hued  porcelain!  And  how 
will  it  come  out  from  the  furnace?" 

A  certain  sadness  touched  him  where  he  sat  under  the 
broad  beech-boughs,  with  the  fruit  and  the  bread  for  his 
noontide  meal.  He  loved  her  well,  loved  her  with  patient 
and  most  gentle  tenderness;  but  he  knew  neither  whence 
she  came  nor  whither  she  went — this  young  life  that  he 
had  rescued — and  it  was  possible  that  the  time  might 
dawn  for  both  when  each  would  deem  it  had  been  well 
if  she  had  never  awakened  from  her  infant's  sleep  among 
the  clematis. 

"Want  a  palace  while  there  is  a  forest !  Little  stupid! 
What  a  thoroughly  feminine  animal  you  are,  preferring 
the  artificial  to  the  natural — the  lesser  thing  that  is  un- 
obtainable to  the  greater  thing  that  lies  in  your  path!"' 
he  cried  suddenly,  rousing  himself  and  the  child  from 
their  mutual  reverie. 

"A  wood  is  very  nice!"  said  Viva,  with  her  head  on 
one  side  glancing  under  the  boughs  that  had  flung  their 
green  and  welcome  shadows  on  her  through  all  the  sum- 
mers  since  she  had  been  firsl  trusted  to  their  shelter  asa 
Waif.  "  Bui — oh!  to  sec  those  palaces  of  Paris!  What 
would  I  give " 

"Your   soul,  little   simpleton,   to   learn   the   madness 


52  TRICOTRIN, 

of  your  barter  too  late!"  he  thought,  as  he  answered  her 
aloud. 

"A  wood  'nice'?  Bah!  you  are  a  Goth,  Viva  mine. 
Why,  there  is  nothing  so  beautiful  on  earth  as  the  rich 
virgin  growth  of  wild  trees.  Look  yonder! — the  squir- 
rels flitting  everywhere,  the  kingfishers  over  that  pool, 
the  huge  boughs  all  moss-draped,  the  glimpses  of  green 
distance  just  caught  between  the  branches,  the  exquisite 
stillness  and  freshness  and  loveliness!  What  would 
gilded  rooms  and  marble  stairways  give  in  fit  exchange 
for  that?  Wise  was  Scipio  to  leave  the  heat,  and  noise, 
and  legions,  and  tumult,  and  clangor  of  the  mistress  of 
the  world  for  the  cool  green  shade  of  his  leafy  soli- 
tudes !" 

"Wise?     Oh  no!" 

"And  why  'oh  no'?  you  who  condemn  Scipio?" 

The  child  laughed:  she  had  .little  historic  knowledge, 
little  knowledge  indeed  of  any  sort,  but  she  had  caught 
up  some  stray  gleams  of  classicisms  from  Tricotrin  at 
intervals. 

"  Why?  Well!  Because  I  would  rather  have  perished 
in  my  prime  amid  all  the  dignities  of  Roman  rule  than 
have  lived  threescore  years  in  retirement " 

"  Qui  respiciunt  ad  pauca  cli  facili  pronunciant,"  inter- 
polated her  companion  with  Aristotelian  terseness. 

"I  don't  know  Latin!"  said  Viva  with  the  pretty  dis- 
dainful gesture  of  a  spoiled  child.  "But, — I  should  love 
to  be  great,  and  I  do  not  believe  Philosophy  can  ever  be 
sweet  and  grand  like  Power !" 

"I  do  not  suppose  you  do.  Philosophy  never  was 
popular  with  your  sex,  who  always  go  by  externals." 

"They  must  be  the  surest  test  to  go  by,"  said  the 
child  quickly.  "If  a  thing  look  very  handsome  it  is  as 
good  as  being  handsome,  is  it  not?" 

"Oh,  you  young  sophist!  So  you  are  content  with 
appearances?  A  bad  indication  that.  Philosophy,  Viva, 
is  the  pomegranate  of  life,  ever  cool  and  most  fragrant, 
and  the  deeper  you  cut  in  it  the  richer  only  will  the  core 
grow.  Power  is  the  Dead  Sea  apple,  golden  and  fair  to 
sight  while  the  hand  strives  to  reach  it;  dry  gray  ashes 
between  dry  fevered  lips  when  once  it  is  grasped  and 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  53 

eaten.  Now  you,  my  friend,  having  tasted  neither,  de- 
cide without  a  moment's  hesitation  between  them;  while 
men  who  have  steeped  all  their  lives  in  one,  or  another, 
die  without  having-  been  able  to  settle  the  selection!" 

."Still" — persisted  the  child  with  a  laugh  at  herself, 
and  she  paused  in  her  sentence,  for  in  the  forest-track, 
which  bent  round  through  the  trees  within  sight,  came 
some  six  or  eight  riders,  who  caught  the  eager  fancy  and 
the  wondering  eyes  of  the  Waif. 

Her  river-side  home  stood  in  such  complete  loneliness 
that  save  for  the  craft  that  passed  up  the  Loire  nothing 
gladdened  her  sight  from  season  to  season  save  the  droves 
of  the  cattle  or  the  market-mules  of  the  peasants.  Her 
thoughts  of  the  beauty  of  power  and  the  charms  of  mag- 
nificence were  purely  innate  in  her;  she  had  never  seen 
anything  whatsoever  to  suggest  them;  and  she  stood 
now  gazing  at  the  party  as  they  advanced,  with  as  en- 
tranced a  delight  as  though  she  beheld  some  celestial 
vision  such  as  she  read  of  in  the  books  at  the  convent. 

They  were  returning  from  hawking  in  the  woods  of 
Villiers,  and  were  going  leisurely,  after  some  successful 
casts  at  herons,  with  all  the  customary  trappings  of  green 
and  scarlet  and  gold,  of  attendants  in  the  picturesque  for- 
ester-costume, of  noble  hounds  panting  and  triumphant, 
of,  in  a  word,  all  the  costly  panoply  of  French  falconry 
revived  in  its  utmost  magnificence.  Breaking  suddenly, 
like  a  Louis  Quatorze  hawking  picture  put  into  motion, 
on  the  woodlawn  solitude  around  her,  they  looked  to 
Viva  like  some  group  called  up  by  enchantment:  she 
stood  breathless,  ajbeautiful  picture  herself,  with  her  feet 
ankle-deep  in  cyclamen  and  mosses,  her  hair  flying  back- 
ward in  the  wind  like  two  golden  wings,  and  her  head 
crowned  with  a  green  wreath  of  oak-leaves  and  maiden- 
hair that  she  hail  woven  as  she  had  talked. 

With  one  accord  the  eves  of  all  the  riders  turned  on 
her,  in  amazed  admiration,  as  they  passed  by  through 
the  forest-way.  Some  called  a  gay  greeting  out  to  her, 
all  gave  her  the  homage  of  bold  ardenl  eves;  one  alone 
uncovered  his  head  as  he  passed  her  and  bowed  low  in 
deference  to  her  sex. 

He  was  the  last  rider  of  all;  a  tall,  slender,  stately 

5* 


54  TRTCOTRIN, 

man,  with  a  haughty  carriage  and  a  fair-hued  face,  grave 
almost  to  melancholy". 

They  were  gone  like  the  breath  of  the  wind,  lost  to 
sight  in  a  turn  of  the  path ;  but  Viva  stood,  still  en- 
tranced ;  with  a  scarlet  glow  on  her  cheeks  and  her  eyes 
full  of  delight  and  desire. 

She  turned  breathlessly  to  Tricotrin. 

"Who  is  Tie?" 

"  Which  he,  petite  ?"— he  had  watched  the  horsemen 
pass  without  rising  from  his  leaning  posture  beneath  the 
beech. 

"  The  one  who  bowed  to  me?" 

"  Why  that  one  in  especial,  Viva  ?  There  were  others 
much  younger  to  pleasure  you." 

"But  he  only  did  that!  Besides, — they  all  looked 
noble,  but  he  alone  looked  great!" 

"Creditable  to  your  discernment,  Viva.  He  is  great — 
and  he  is  as  tired  as  ever  Scipio  was!" 

"But  his  name?"  persisted  the  child. 

"His  name?     Well, — Eustace  Estmere." 

"Estmere?     And  what  is  he?" 

"You  have  said — a  great  man.  Repeat  your  exaudi 
nos  for  him,  Viva." 

"  He  cannot  want  it.     He  looks  strong." 

"The  strong  suffer." 

"But  so  proud  too?" 

"  And  the  proud  suffer  more." 

Viva  gave  a  heavy  sigh : 

"How  I  shall  suffer  then!"  she  murmured.  "But  does 
he  live  here  ?     How  is  it  I  have  never  seen  him? " 

"He  owns  Villiers;  but  he  is  rarely  there;  and  it  is 
three  good  leagues  away." 

"He  owns  Villiers!" 

To  Viva  it  made  him  as  a  monarch ;  once,  once  only, 
one  fete-day,  grand'mere  had  taken  her  to  see  Villiers; 
one  summer-time  when  the  people  were  permitted  free 
range  over  the  park  and  the  gardens  and  the  terraces, 
down  the  dim  never-ending  splendid  galleries,  and  through 
the  orangeries  and  the  palm  houses  and  the  wilderness 
of  flowers;  the  glories  of  Villiers  had  never  ceased  to 
haunt  her  imagination,  though  it  too  rarely  came  within 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  55 

range  of  her  friend  Sarazin's  boat  for  her  to  hare  had  a 
second  chance  of  beholding  this  Versailles  of  her  prov- 
ince.  The  man  who  could  own  it  looked  to  Viva  as  the 
sovereign  of  France. 

"And  he  bowed  to  me/"  she  repeated  softly  and  exult- 
antly under  her  breath. 

"Chut,  Viva!"  interrupted,  Tricotrin  somewhat  impa- 
tiently.  "  In  what  does  the  bow  of  a  noble  differ  from 
that  of  a  peasant? — it  is  a  chivalry  to  your  sex  in  both, 
nothing  more !  Your  Lord  Estmere  and  I  are  appropri- 
ate symbols  to  accompany  my  pomegranate  metaphor. 
He  is  power:  I  am  philosophy.  I  lie  at  my  ease  on  a 
bed  of  mosses  that  have  not  a  thorn ;  I  find  their  true 
taste  in  plain  bread  and  purple  grapes  ;  I  am  without 
bond  and  without  burden ;  I  take  no  thought  for  the  mor- 
row ;  my  mind  is  my  kingdom  and  mankind  are  my 
brethren;  where  I  will  there  I  go,  and  I  have  none  to 
dictate  to  me.  Now  my  lord  there ! — he  wears  the  pur- 
ple robe  with  the  steel  corslet  heavy  beneath;  he  sleeps 
on  palace-beds  and  State  care  lies  down  with  him  ;  he  is 
the  proudest  man  of  his  order,  and  his  honor  is  stung  to 
the  quick  where  he  cannot  shield  it;  the  garter  ribbon 
crosses  his  breast,  and  his  heart  aches  under  it  with  a 
pain  never  quiet ;  he  is  a  great  man,  ergo,  he  is  never 
free,  wherever  he  goes  thither  comment  and  curiosity 
follow  him,  and  no  sorrow  can  be  sacred  that  befalls  him, 
because  the  chattering  world  must  have  it  as  prey.  I 
have  the  pomegranate  ;  he  lias  the  Dead  Sea  apple.  And 
yet — so  eternal  is  the  duello  between  philosophy  and 
power,  and  so  little  will  either  of  those  rivals  yield  to 
the  other,  that  1  would  wager  ho  would  no  more  change 
places  with  mo  than  I  would  ehange  places  with  him  I" 

And  Tricotrin,  who  in  those  words  had  forgotten  the 
child  ho  addressed,  sank  back  again  among  his  mosses 
with  a  laugh  on  his  lips, — a  laugh  infinitely  humorous, 
something  tender,  and  a  little,  ever  so  little,  sad. 

Viva  did  m>t  answer;  the  young  aspirant  to  Power 
remained  unconvinced. 


56  TR1C0TRIN, 


CHAPTER  VI. 

"  You  are  content  with  the  little  angel,  Tricotrin  ?" 
asked  Grand'mere  Virelois  that  evening  in  the  porch  of 
the  river-side  house  which  she  owed  to  him. 

"As  little  of  an  angel  as  may  be,"  said  Tricotrin. 
"  But  I  am  as  content  with  her  as  man  ever  can  be  with 
a  feminine  thing ;  which  is  not  much  to  say.  I  am  well 
content  with  your  care  of  her,  if  you  mean  that,  good 
friend.  The  child  thrives  as — nothing  but  a  Waif  whom 
nobody  wants  ever  could  do." 

"Ah,  Tricotrin!  everybody  wants  her  who  sees  her. 
She  is  as  beautiful  as  the  morning." 

"Oh  yes,"  murmured  Tricotrin;  "and  the  young  tri- 
bunes will  shout  ad  leones  !  and  she  will  get  flung  down 
in  the  sands  of  the  circus,  'butchered  to  make  a  Parisian 
holiday!'" 

"Paris?"  repeated  grand'mere,  catching  but  one  word 
she  knew.     "You  mean  to  take  her  to  Paris?" 

"  Certainly  not;  but  she  will  take  herself  some  day,  no 
doubt." 

Grand'mere  sighed  heavily.  Paris  was  a  word  of  ter- 
ror to  her.  She  had  never  been  out  of  her  own  grape- 
country  ;  but  it  was  there,  yonder  in  Paris,  that  the  mar- 
ble block,  lifted  up  to  adorn  a  palace,  had  fallen,  and 
crushed  into  a  shapeless  mass  the  noble  young  form  of 
her  first-born  son;  it  was  there  also,  that,  amid  the  blood 
and  the  smoke  of  the  barricades  of  the  Thirty  Days,  the 
youngest  mouth  that  had  once  lisped  its  prayers  at  her 
knee  had  murmured  with  its  dying  whisper,  "N'en  dis 
rien  a  ma,  mere.'''1 

"Paris  !  Paris!"  muttered  the  old  woman,  whirling  her 
spinning-wheel,  with  the  evening  light  about  her  in  the 
old  oaken  doorway;  "God  forbid  the  child  should  get  to 
Paris.     What  could  she  do  but  perish  there?" 

Tricotrin  smoked  in  silence.  It  was  never  his  way  to 
disturb  himself  concerning  the  future.     It  was  waste  of 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  5? 

thought  and  time,  he  considered.  Rattle  your  dice  how 
you  would,  you  could  never  tell  what  the  throw  would 
be;  unless,  indeed,  you  turned  gamester,  and  weighted  the 
ivory  of  circumstance  with  the  lead  of  dishonesty:  which 
was  not  in  his  manner  of  dealing. 

"Do  you  know,  Tricotrin,"  continued  grand'mere,  "do 
you  know,  I  often  wonder  what  her  fate  will  be,  the  pre- 
cious child!  You  see,  I  am  eighty-three  next  month  ;  I 
have  not  very  many  more  years  before  me ;  and  she  is  so 
young,  and  you — good  as  you  are — are  not  really  her 
father.  What  will  become  of  the  little  one?  I  may  die 
any  day,  and  you — you  wander  so  far,  you  are  away  so 
long!  What  would  become  of  the  Viva  if  I  died  in  your 
absence?" 

"Never  ask  what  will  become  of  anything,  grand'mere. 
It  shows  a  curiosity  highly  imphilosophic ;  and  very  im- 
pertinent, too,  in  a  good  woman  like  you,  who  thinks 
Providence  looks  after  every  little  detail,  from  an  earth- 
quake that  kills  ten  thousand  people,  to  the  nail  that 
tears  the  slit  in  your  blue  gown.  What  will  become 
of  the  world?  Nobody  knows.  If  it  disappear  to- 
morrow it  will  not  be  missed  in  the  universe.  'Thcro 
is  a  falling  star;  look  at  it,  my  dear!'  some  man  in  Ju- 
piter will  say  to  his  wife.  That  will  be  all  the  world's 
monody." 

"You  will  ever  jest,  Tricotrin,"  said  the  old  woman, 
with  a  little  shudder  over  her  spinning-wheel.  If  he 
were  the  Wandering  Jew,  as  some  said,  who  knew  but 
what  ho  might  have  the  mission  of  the  world's  sudden 
extinction  to  execute! 

"  I  do  not  care  about  the  world !"  she  resumed,  "I  have 
lived  my  time  in  it,  and  it  is  cruel — cruel!  I5ut  the  little 
treasure  has  all  her  time  before  her;  and  look  you,  mon 
a  mi,  1  gel  anxious  as  she  grows  older.  While  she  was 
a  child  it  was  all  right  enough.  Lei  a  child  have  the  sun 
and  the  air,  and  sweet  milk,  and  plenty  of  love,  and  a 
child  is  happy. — happy  on  a  hare  floor  and  in  a  wooden 
cradle.  Bui  a  young  girl  is  different;  and  sometimes  1 
wonder  what  will  become  of  her.  She  is  proud,  she  has 
the  ways  of  a  princess, — she  is  not  a  creature  yon  can 
set  to  scrub,  and  bake,  and  sew.    Among  the  flowers,  on 


58  TRICOTRIN, 

the  water,  singing  where  she  sets  in  the  trees,  dancing 
when  she  hears  boats  go  by  with  music, — that  is  Viva's 
life.  But  it  will  not  be  a  good  life  for  womanhood,  when 
there  is  no  name  and  no  mother." 

There  was  a  pathos  in  the  feeble,  aged  voice,  as  the 
speaker  shook  her  head  over  her  wheel,  with  the  sun  so 
bright  on  her  brown  face  and  her  white  cap,  and  the  bril- 
liant child  for  whom  she  feared,  fluttering  like  an  oriole 
in  the  distance  among  the  scarlet  beans  and  the  low  ap- 
ple-trees. 

True  feeling  never  spoke  in  vain  to  Tricotrin.  He  bent 
gently  and  reverently  to  the  bent  old  figure,  while  his 
eyes  glanced  to  the  gay  form  of  his  Waif. 

"Nay,  grand'mere,  do  not  disquiet  yourself,"  he  said, 
earnestly.  "  The  child  is  brave,  proud,  truthful.  These 
are  three  grand  safeguards  against  evil.  She  has  much 
vanity,  many  caprices,  too  fond  a  craze  for  things  out  of 
her  reach  ;  but  her  heart  is  of  gold';  these  foibles  are  but 
the  foibles  of  sex.  For  her  future,  we  must  leave  it. 
How  can  we  say  whither  she  goes?  we,  who  do  not  even 
know  whence  she  came!  But  I  have  good  faith  in  the 
Waif;  faith  that  she  will  not  decline  into  evil,  even  if  evil 
tempt  her,  which  it  shall  never  do  while  I  live.  For  the 
rest,  if  aught  ail  you,  tell  the  good  women  at  the  convent 
to  look  to  her.  You  know  that  I  love  no  churches;  and 
I  was  ill  pleased  that  you  steeped  the  child  in  the  acid 
and  the  poison  of  Creed.  While  women  are  nurtured  on 
superstition  the  men  born  of  them  will  never  reach  their 
full  stature.  But  I  let  you  have  your  own  way  in  that 
matter  because  thus  you  get  shelter  for  her,  and  thus  you 
set  at  ease  your  own  conscience.  Let  the  nuns  know  if 
you  dread  anything  for  your  health ;  and  for  the  years  to 
come,  we  must  trust  Viva  herself.  If  she  choose  Luxury, 
having  known  Love,  she  will  not  be  worth  a  regret!" 

A  certain  darkness  passed  over  his  face  as  he  spoke. 
There  was  that  which  jarred  on  him  in  the  child's  inborn 
and  ineradicable  desires  for  a  different  life  than  that  to 
which  he  had  saved  her. 

"  That  is  true,  Tricotrin,"  muttered  grand'mere.  "  Still, 
it  is  the  stars  that  fall,  you  know,  so  fast,  so  fast,  through 
August  nights!    And  it  is  just  the  proud  ones  who  have 


THE   STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  59 

not  gold  at  the  back  of  pride ;  it  is  just  the  beautiful  ones 
who  have  but  cottage-roofs  over  their  beauty ;  that  Paris 
devours — devours  Ah!  is  she  not  filled, — that  cruel, 
terrible  Paris, — with  the  flowers  of  the  country,  that  give 
their  sweetness  to  her  to  be  trampled  dead  on  the  stones 
of  her  streets?" 

There  was  a  tragic  force  in  the  eloquence  of  the  aged 
withered  lips.  Grand'niere  was  a  simple,  credulous,  in- 
nocent old  woman,  who  had  led  her  long  life  ever  under 
the  shadows  of  the  vines  of  her  birthplace,  but  she  had 
suffered, — specially  had  she  never  forgotten  her  youngest- 
born,  whom  that  beautiful,  fearful,  resistless  Paris  had 
drawn  in,  in  his  boyhood,  and  his  ardor,  and  his  fearless 
faith,  and  who  had  been  murdered  among  the  children  of 
France,  when  the  streets  ran  blood  in  the  days  of  July. 

"True!"  said  Tricotrin,  gently.  "Paris  is  beautiful, 
and  she  is  terrible,  very  terrible  1  For  in  her  the  highest 
and  the  lowest  forms  of  humanity  meet ;  in  her  the  per- 
fection  of  Pleasure  stands  side  by  side  with  the  culmina- 
tion of  Vice.  She  is  beautiful,  she  is  terrible:  fur  she  is 
the  epitome  of  human  life.  You  are  right,  grand'niere: 
none  can  say  what  flower  she  may  not  draw  in — to  bloom 
in  unnatural  brilliance  a  moment,  and  perish  of  the  air 
that  forced  it,  a  trodden  thing  beneath  men's  feetl" 

"Yes;  and  therefore  the  child " 

"Allons  done!  The  child  is  a  child;  leave  her  to  the 
future.  Sufficient  for  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof.  Why 
take  thought  for  her  womanhood?  Thinking  will  not 
avert  it.  'If  the  cucumber  be  bitter  throw  it  away,' 
says  Antoninus.     Do  the  same  with  a  thought." 

"But  it  is  not  possible  always." 

"Paf!  I  think  it  is.  There  is  no  cucumber  so  bitter 
that  honey  will  not  put  the  taste  of  it  out  ;  and  no  cucum- 
ber bo  heavy  that  one  cannot  throw  it  over  some  wall. 
You  have  reared  her  well,  grand'niere, — barring  that  little 
touch  of  church-superstition,  which,  woman-like,  you 
could  not  help  giving.  You  have  taughl  her  to  scorn  ;i 
lie;  you  could  not  arm  her  with  a  better  shield.  Do  not 
disquiet  yourself;  you  have  done  your  duty,  whatever 
the  issue.     There  i.^  do  nobler  crown  to  a  life." 

Grand'mere's  In-own  cheek  grew  warmer  with  pleasure ; 


60  TRICOTRIN, 

though  she  was  a  brave  old  woman,  and  cared  little  for 
any  one,  so  long  as  she  "did  her  duty"  in  her  homely, 
truthful  fashion,  she  yet  always  held  Tricotrin  in  a  cer- 
tain awe,  as  of  one  endowed  with  occult  and  omniscient 
powers,  and  it  was  with  infinite  relief  that  she  always 
learned  that  he  commended  her. 

With  these  words  he  left  her  and  joined  his  Waif,  who 
had  just  captured  a  sparkling  azure  butterfly  in  her  hand. 

"You  are  not  going  to  kill  it,  Viva?" 

"Oh  no!  only  to  look  at  it." 

"Good!  The  Mussulmans  treasure  every  little  torn 
scrap  of  paper,  because  on  it  there  may  be  some  line  of 
the  Koran.  So  should  we  cherish  every  little  ephemeral 
atom  of  life,  because  on  it,  however  small,  is  the  impress 
of  God.  Jean  Paul  has  had  that  thought  before  me.  Let 
the  creature  go ;  you  wound  its  delicate  wings,  and  you 
see  it  far  better  winging  its  way  through  the  sunset  glow. 
There!" 

The  child  lifted  her  head,  and  watched  it  as  it  flew  high 
through  the  golden  warmth  of  the  young  summer  even- 
ing. 

"  How  I  should  love  to  roam  like  that !"  she  cried.  He 
smiled  a  little  sadly. 

"Impatient  bird,  to  long  to  quit  the  nest!  Ah,  it  is 
always  so  with  the  fledglings  !  The  old  tree  is  so  dull, 
the  home  wood  so  wearisome,  and  it  looks  all  summer 
yonder!  They  know  nothing  of  the  plains  of  snow,  the 
clouds  of  thunder,  the  driving  winds,  the  storms  of  win- 
ter!  " 

"But  you  roam!" 

"  Certainly  I  do.     But  I  am  not  a  woman." 

"A  woman !  Because  one  will  be  a  woman  must  one 
never  see  the  world?" 

The  words  were  petulant  and  longing.  Viva  was 
happy,  but  she  was  not  so  happy  but  what  she  was  also 
a  little  ill-content.  She  looked  over  at  that  sun-steeped 
distance,  to  which  the  butterfly  was  taking  its  flight  with 
all  the  restlessness  of  curious  desire.  What  could  that 
"world"  be  which  lay  beyond?  It  was  inborn  in  the 
child — that  longing  for  forbidden  knowledge  ;  that  aspira- 
tion after  wider  spheres. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  61 

"Was  your  mother  an  empress  or  a  gipsy?  Certes 
she  must  have  been  one  or  the  other,"  murmured  Trico- 
trin.  "Nothing  else  could  have  given  you  birth.  So  you 
want- to  roam,  Viva?  And  you  do  nothing  all  day  long 
but  live  very  much  like  that  butterfly  ?  Whatever  shall 
we  do  with  you,  little  one,  in  a  year  or  two's  time?" 

"  Take  me  with  you!  Let  me  roam  too!"  laughed  the 
child,  with  her  arms  flung  about  him  in  gay  pleading 
caress. 

Tricotrin  laughed  also;  then  a  momentary  warmth 
rose  over  his  face, — for  the  first  time  it  occurred  to  him 
that  his  Waif,  though  a  child  now,  would,  in  a  year  or 
two  more,  be  no  longer  a  child;  and  that,  although  he 
filled  the  place  of  her  father  to  her,  he  had  no  kinship  with 
this  bright  stray  thing,  whom,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  he  had 
but  the  other  day  found  left  to  die  among  the  clematis. 

"  That  is  too  much  to  ask  !"  he  answered  merrily,  choos- 
ing his  own  thought  not  to  touch  her  too.  "  I  carry  one 
thing  feminine  indeed,  but  then  she  is  portable  and  ex- 
ceedingly small ;  which  you,  my  Waif,  who  will  be  tallest 
among  tall  women,  never  can  be.  Besides, — the  essence 
of  wandering  is  to  wander  alone.  Oh!  I  dare  say  you 
will  find  some  way  of  yourself  to  spread  your  wings 
when  the  time  comes;  but  wait  till  they  are  full-grown, 
Viva,  if  you  take  my  advice.  To  flutter  a  little  way  and 
then  fall,  will  not  suit  you." 

"No,  indeed!  When  I  soar  at  all  I  will  keep  above 
earth  like  a  hawk!" 

She  tossed  her  fair  head  back  as  she  spoke  with  haughty 
careless  security;  she  might  have  been  the;  daughter  of 
some  free  victorious  deserl  king. 

Tricotrin  looked  al  her  with  earnest  scrutiny. 

"And  forget  the  lark's  nesl  among  the  field-grasses  that 
first  sheltered  you,"  he  said  to  himself.  "I  dare  say! 
That  will  be  very  like  youth — and  very  like  woman- 
hood I" 

Bui  he  did  doI  utter  the  though!  loud  enough  for  her 
to  hear,  as  he  gave  a  farewell  caress  with  his  hand  to  her 
sunn;  brow. 

'•  Well;  adieu,  for  to-day!" 

6 


62  TRICOTRIN. 

"  Must  you  go  ?  Must  you  ?"  pleaded  the  child,  with 
loving  entreaty. 

"I  must!  I  have  promised  Yvon  Mascarros  to  play 
at  his  betrothal  feast  to-morrow,  and  his  place  is  a  dozen 
leagues  from  this." 

"  But  when  will  you  come  again  ?" 

"When?  How  can  I  say?  I  will  not  be  long  with- 
out coming, — unless,  indeed,  I  go  off  to  the  Moon  or  the 
Shades, — for  you  are  fair  to  see,  Viva;  and  since  we  are 
both  Waifs  and  Strays  it  is  meet  that  we  cling  together." 

"  But  then — if  you  love  me,  you  will  please  me  and 
not  go?" 

"Ah,  ha!  You  have  so  much  of  womanhood  in  you 
already  that  you  count  the  strength  of  love  by  the  obedi- 
ence it  gives  to  your  caprices,  and  exact  its  confession 
only  also  to  exact  its  submission?  How  true  to  your 
sex  you  are,  Viva  !  Nay — I  love  you,  though  I  doubt  if 
it  be  wise  to  love  anything  save  Mankind  and  Doghood. 
And  all  I  hope,  Waif  of  mine,  is,  that  you  will  never  re- 
proach me  with  having  helped  you  to  get  out  of  your 
bed  of  clematis.  Enjoy,  mignonne,  the  utmost  you  can; 
the  happier  you  are  the"  less  conscience-stricken  shall  Mis- 
tigri  and  I  feel  at  our  connivance  with  your  escape  into 
existence !" 

Viva  laughed — she  always  fancied  herself  that  the  little 
black  Mistigri  was  ajamiliar  of  her  own  fairy-mother's — 
and  she  threw  her  arms  fondly  about  him  once  more. 

"  1  am  always  so  happy  when  you  are  here,  and  so 
good  too  !  Oh  !  if  you  never  went  away  I  should  never 
have  those  wicked,  envious,  wayward  thoughts-;  you  are 
like  my  guardian  angel !" 

For  she  did  in  truth  love  him  warmly  ;  he  stood  to  her 
in  the  stead  of  father,  mother,  brother,  of  home,  and  of 
kindred,  and  of  the  world ;  and  though  the  child  was 
vain,  and  like  most  children  selfish,  she  had  great  affec- 
tion in  her,  and  spent  it  all  on  him. 

Tricotrin's  eyes  smiled  with  exceeding  tenderness  on 
her,  while  over  the  fearless  brightness  of  his  face  a  flash 
of  pleasure  passed.  So  little  had  he  of  egotism  or  exac- 
tion, so  little  did  he  make  count  of  his  best  actions,  so 
quickly  was  he  moved  by  any  gleam  of  gratitude  to  him, 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  63 

that  he  felt  himself  the  debtor  of  the  child  who  owed  him 
all,  because  she  paid  him  in  the  rare  coinage  of  a  pure 
attachment. 

"  f  thank  you,  Viva  mine,"  he  said  softly.  "Make  me 
indeed  your  guardian  angel,  by  letting  my  memory  exor- 
cise all  evil  things  from  your  young  soul.  I  ask  no 
higher  reward." 

He  touched  her  bright  upturned  forehead  lightly  with 
his  lips,  in  his  accustomed  caress  of  greeting  and  adieu, 
and  left  her  to  unloose  his  boat  from  its  moorings,  and 
push  it  off  into  the  stream,  whose  waters  were  flushing 
to  violet,  and  russet,  and  golden  hues  beneath  the  glories 
of  the  setting  sun. 

There  was  a  trail  of  light  across  the  river  like  sheeted 
gold,  into  which  the  small  boat  glided;  his  form  was  full 
in  its  luster,  as  standing  up  and  wafting  it  forward  with 
one  oar,  he  uncovered  his  head  to  her  and  laughed  a  last 
farewell. 

That  brilliance  was  shed  still  about  the  figure  of  the 
child,  waiting  upon  the  bank,  among  the  scarlet  flowers, 
while  the  boat  passed  onward  into  the  shadows  of  the 
coming  night,  where  the  sun-rays  did  not  follow. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

"Nothing  she  ilucs  or  Beems 
But  smacks  of  something  greater  than  herself, 

Too  noble  for  this  place " 

He  mused,  as  his  thoughts  remained  with  her,  while 
the  strokes  of  his  oars  swept  liini  away.  lie  had  never 
sought  wealth;  he  was  a  republican  to  the  core;  he  loved 
besl  the  simplest  forms  of  life;  he  deemed  happiest  those 
whose  wants  were  fewest  ;  audio!  in  this  foundling  whom 
he  had  protected  was  a  nature  in  the  strongesl  opposition 
to  all  his  views,  requiring  by  sheer  inborn  instinct  all 
thai  circumstances  rendered  it  totally  impossible  he  could 
ever  give  her. 


G4  TRICOTRIN, 

Through  the  years  of  her  brief  existence,  he  had  taken 
no  heed  of  the  child  beyond  the  provision  of  her  actual 
needs,  and  the  kindly  careless  gentleness  he  would  have 
shown  to  a  clog  or  a  cat;  he  had  never  regarded  her  in 
the  light  of  a  possible  burden,  a  possible  difficulty  to  him- 
self in  the  time  that  was  to  come.  The  joyous  and  neg- 
ligent temper  of  Tricotrin  was  not  one  that  regarded  the 
future  ;  to  rescue  the  child  had  been  an  impulse  with  him; 
that  she  would  ever  require  more  than  the  few  easily 
granted  wants  of  childhood,  that  the  time  would  ever 
come  when  she  would  grow  impatient  of  the  life  she  led, 
had  never  occurred  to  him  until  now  that  her  own  words 
and  those  of  the  old  woman  had  suggested  the  doubt. 
He  was  used  himself,  by  choice,  to  live  much  among  the 
people  ;  his  time,  by  preference,  was  much  passed  among 
the  peasantries  of  divers  nations.  He  was  habituated  to 
seeing  young  girls  who  were  content  enough  if  they  got 
a  new  ribbon  for  their  hair,  or  rode  queen  of  a  harvest  on 
a  bullock-drawn  wagon  :  that  the  Waif  would  prove  a 
young  rebel,  with  the  pride  of  a  princess  and  fastidious 
tastes  curiously  inherent  in  her,  was  an  additional  perplex- 
ity to  the  whole  dilemma  of  her  maintenance. 

The  flower  was  fair,  and  was  yet  only  in  its  bud  ;  its 
hereafter  had  never  risen  before  him  as  a  matter  of  med- 
itation and  of  possible  future  embarrassment.  And  even 
now  he  threw  the  fear  from  him :  it  was  free  to  float  on 
the  air  in  its  own  happy  fashion,  sun-kissed  and  wind- 
tossed,  it  bloomed  after  Nature's  own  will  with  it,  and  all 
its  fragrance  was  natural,  like  the  sweetness  of  roses  ; — 
it  was  the  best  thing  that  could  betide  any  opening  blos- 
som to  be  left  so  wholly  to  Nature.  With  Nature,  there- 
fore, he  left  too  her  future. 

And  he  sent  his  boat  up  the  stream  with  a  swift  strong 
impulsion,  shaking  the  care  from  his  thoughts  as  he  shook 
the  water-drops  from  his  oars  :  he  was  something  late  for 
the  feast  of  Yvon  Mascarros,  and  Tricotrin  never  broke 
promises  even  in  so  small  a  matter  as  a  vine-dresser's 
marriage-feast. 

Care  never  waited  with  him  ;  it  will  scarcely  ever  tarry 
where  it  is  not  entertained  with  welcome;  and  the  rich 
sunlit  nature  of  the  man  had  no  kinship  with  it  as  a  guest. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  65 

There  had  been  times,  inevitable  in  every  life,  when  he 
had  suffered  with  the  intense  passion  of  all  vivid  charac- 
ters; but  they  had  been  few  and  far  between,  and  the 
gracious  gladness  of  his  inherent  temper  had  always  re- 
sumed supremacy.  Not  for  him  the  feverish  unrest  of 
ambition ;  the  carking  thirst  of  the  seekers  of  wealth  ; 
the  vacillating  hopes  and  fears  of  those  whose  breath  is 
the  breath  of  the  world's  applause.  He  was  not  pursued 
by  the  haunting  terrors  of  the  hangers-on  of  public  favor ; 
he  was  not  pressed  by  the  uphill  race  of  men  who  pant 
their  hearts  out  in  the  struggle  for  gold  ;  he  was  not  driven 
to  find  no  sweetness  in  sleep,  no  beauty  in  summer  hours, 
no  charm  in  women's  smile,  because  greed  hunted  him  on 
and  on,  through  dark  and  devious  ways,  seeking  the  rivers 
of  gold.  He  sought  neither  riches  nor  renown;  he  greeted 
each  dawn  without  regret  for  its  yesterday;  he  saw.  the 
sun  set  and  the  night  descend  with  happy  Jean  Paul  hu- 
mor, saying  in  those  words  of  wisdom,  "I  am  content 
since  I  have  lived  to-day!" 

And  he  loved  the  people,  and  was  loved  by  them; 
making  his  home  wheresoever  men  enjoyed  and  suffered. 

Many  wondered  whence  he  came  ;  many  wove  a  thou- 
sand marvelous  histories  to  account  for  the  anomalies 
which  even  the  least  intelligent  could  mark  in  him  :  none 
knew  anything  for  truth  concerning  his  origin,  his  nation, 
or  his  history.  Old  people  in  this  vine-country  remem- 
bered him  a  bright  boy  of  twenty  years,  with  the  bronze 
of  southern  suns  on  his  fair  skin,  and  the  fire  of  a  pas- 
sionate youth  in  his  blue  eyes;  who  had  come  no  one 
knew  whence,  who  laughed,  and  loved,  and  played,  and 
worked  among  them;  and  left  them  often  for  long  ab- 
sences, and  returned  to  them  always  the  same,  however 
many  years  had  passed,  however  slight  the  stay  he  made. 
He  was  "Tricotrin;"  all  was  said  in  that;  he  came  and 
went  whenever  it  pleasured  him,  never  questioned,  ever 
welcomed,  like  the  swallows  df  the  spring. 

He  was  not  wholly  of  them,  thai  even  the  peasantry 

felt  ;   but  lie  was  with  them  heart  and  soul,  and  they  loved 

him  better  for  that   nameless  difference,  that   intangible 

unlikeness,  which  made  them,  while  he  toiled  among  them 

and  feasted  among  them,  \ei   perceive  a  royalty  in  him 

6* 


6fi  TRICOTRIN, 

that  he  never  lost;  even  as  the  shepherd-kings  of  the  old 
east  were  none  less  kingly  to  their  people  because  they 
lived  on  pulse  and  water,  because  they  sheared  the  fleece 
and  folded  the  herds,  and  dwelt  under  the  tents  of  their 
wandering  people. 

The  people  loved  him  in  all  lands ;  especially  they  loved 
him  in  this  beautiful  France,  which  he  had  made  his  mis- 
tress in  preference  over  all  the  fair  sisters  of  Europe. 
The  people  caressed  him,  obeyed  him,  adored  him,  with 
a  loyalty  that  would  have  rendered  him  an  irresistible 
power  in  times  of  revolution  ;  and  as  he  rowed  down  the 
river  he  knew  well  that  there  was  not  a  cottage  on  its 
banks,  not  a  water-mill  on  its  shores,  not  a  cabaret  in  its 
villages,  under  whose  roof  he  would  not  have  been  wel- 
come as  is  the  summer  sun  in  mowing  time,  when  its 
early  smile  gives  promise  of  the  after-math. 

But  he  did  not  care  to  go  ashore  in  that  hot  and  lus- 
trous summer  night.  Three  miles  down  the  river  he  over- 
took the  hay-barge,  slowly  floating  in  the  moonlight  with 
its  load  of  fresh-cut  grasses,  odorous  as  violets.  It 
drifted  through  the  broad,  sheeted,  silver  radiance  lazily, 
charmingly,  with  its  great  sail  black  against  the  sky,  and 
the  fragrant  dews  on  its  huge  soft  mounds  of  fodder  that 
were  tossed  loosely  together,  with  the  wild  clover  and  the 
white  marguerites,  scarcely  dead,  that  had  been  mown 
with  them.  He  hailed  it,  knowing  its  owner  well,  and 
the  men  recognized  him  with  a  shout  of  delight.  The 
barge  was  stopped;  in  a  second  more  he  had  leapt  up 
among  them,  received  with  vociferous  delight;  they  were 
to  sail  all  night  down  the  stream,  and  they  took  his  little 
boat  in  tow  with  eager  pleasure. 

The  skipper  was  a  lithe,  handsome,  black -browed  Mar- 
seillais,  with  his  broad  chest  bare,  and  a  red  sash  knotted 
round  his  loins,  and  great  gold  earrings  in  his  ears,  who 
had  taken  the  peaceful  Loire  traffic  for  love  of  a  Loiret 
woman. 

The  skipper  had  earned  a  perilous  repute  for  lawless 
piratical  voyages  in  the  southern  waters,  and  was  said  to 
be  as  hot  and  as  swift  and  as  fierce  as  his  own  tramontana; 
hence  the  people  of  the  woman  he  loved  denied  her  to  him 
with  bitter  words  and  loud  revilings.     Margot  clung  to 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  G7 

her  fiery  southern  lover,  and  refused  to  be  comforted : 
there  was  misery  for  the  child,  and  feud  between  her 
suitor  and  her  brethren.  At  last,  in  one  evil  day,  the 
latter  heaped  insult  on  insult  till  the  Marseillais'  blood  of 
flame  leaped  up  like  a  sword  from  its  scabbard ;  his  knife 
flashed  in  the  sun,  and  would  have  darted  down,  first  to 
be  sheathed  in  her  brother's  breast  and  then  in  his  own, 
had  not  an  outstretched  hand  turned  the  blow,  at  price 
of  a  wound  in  its  own  palm,  and  Tricotrin's  voice  called 
out — "  Has  France  no  foes  that  her  sons  fight  together  ?" 

The  offenders  were  passionately  contrite,  they  wept 
like  children  to  see  his  blood,  they  implored  his  pardon, 
they  cursed  themselves:  he  laughed  and  drew  little  Mar- 
got  to  him  with  his  unwounded  arm. 

"  Little  one  !  Are  you  still  not  afraid  of  that  sea-lion  ? 
No  ?  You  think  he  is  so  sure  not  to  wound  you  ?  Well, 
then — if  they  are  sorry  for  my  hurt,  your  brethren  must 
give  you  to  me  to  give  to  him.  You  are  the  only  lion- 
tamer  for  this  wihl  beast  of  ours  1" 

And  they  gave  her:  so  he  made  peace  among  them, 
and  won  for  evermore  the  fierce,  ardent,  grateful  soul  of 
the  Marseillais. 

Margot's  lion  never  harmed  her;  as  her  lion  to  Una, 
was  Eudes  Caros  to  the  pretty,  brown,  soft,  tender  child 
of  the  Loire.  He  gave  up  the  wild  night  roaming  on  the 
shores  of  the  Riviera,  for  peaceful  river-trading  between 
the  banks  of  her  native  stream  ;  and  now,  in  the  little  ca- 
bin of  the  hay-barge,  where  the  solitary  oil  lamp  hung 
above  her  lovely  bent  head,  Margol  sat,  with  a  dreaming 
happy  smile  in  her  drooped  dark  eyes  and  on  her  thought- 
ful mouth,  as  she  gazed  at  a  picture  of  Christ  hung  under 
the  lamp,  and  looked  from  that  downward  on  the  child 
that  lay  asleep  ;it    her  breast. 

"Did  Mary  know  he  would  be  God  and  yet  die  on  the 
cross?  Ah,  how  she  must  have  longed  that  he  had  been 
but  a  mortal  child  who  could  grow  to  manhood,  and  livo 
on  obscure  but  unharmed  I"  thought  little  Margot,  press- 
ing closer  the  flushed  cheek  of  her  tirst-born  ;  the  thought 
was  wholly  a  woman's  ! 

Better  an  ignoble  safety,  an  inglorious  impunity,  for  the 
man  that  they  mould,  than  the  divinity  of  martyrdom, 


68  TRICOTRTN, 

than  the  crucifixion  of  genius  I  Better  that  the  soul, 
which  is  not  of  them,  should  die  out  in  apathy  than  that 
the  body  they  conceive  and  nourish  should  perish ! 

So  they  say — Margot  and  her  million  of  sisters  upon 
earth  :  and,  of  the  sons  they  bear,  none  go  up  to  Calvary, 
but  thousands  cumber  the  world  as  swine.  Yet  these 
women  are  good  ;  their  kisses  are  tender,  their  hands  are 
pure:  it  is  but  their  souls  that  are  dead;  it  is  but  the 
souls  of  their  ohildren  they  kill. 

Whether  Margot's  son  were  destined  to  become  poet 
or  swineherd,  leader  or  servitor  among  men,  he  slept  hap- 
pily in  her  arms  now,  and  she  dreamt  happily  over  him, 
while  the  barge  floated  in  moonlight  down  the  stream, 
and  Tricotrin,  nonchalantly  cast  upon  the  great  sweet 
piles  of  hay,  talked  with  the  Marseillais,  watched  the 
shadowy  landscapes  drifting  by,  or  touched  now  and  then 
the  Straduarius  to  fitful  cadences  full  of  river-song. 

The  night  was  very  warm  and  profoundly  still ;  one  of 
the  splendid  nights  of  France,  with  stars  innumerable 
burning  through  a  cloudless  atmosphere.  The  slow,  calm 
passage  of  the  barge  with  the  fresh  odor  of  its  freight 
rising  on  the  air,  with  the  woods  and  vineyards  and  vil- 
lages of  the  river-banks  softened  to  an  inconceivable 
beauty  by  the  light,  with  the  murmur  of  the  water  as  it 
parted  and  met  again,  and  with  the  occasional  chime  of 
belfry-bells  from  the  land  ringing  some  mellow  monotone 
as  they  told  the  flight  of  an  hour,  was  the  fittest  method 
for  the  passage  of  a  summer  night,  and  held  a  thousand 
poems  and  pictures  in  its  indolent  starlit  voyage.  Such 
pictures,  such  poems,  as  he  best  loved  to  fill  his  sight,  and 
his  heart,  and  his  memory  with  ;  such  as  seen,  and  felt, 
and  treasured,  with  the  true  instinct  of  pure  love,  had 
made  his  life  itself  the  poem  and  the  picture  that  it  was. 

As  the  evening  wore  on,  Caros,  prouder  of  the  pas- 
senger his  barge  bore  than  he  would  have  been  of  a  king 
for  his  freight,  went  below  to  his  Margot;  Tricotrin  re- 
mained stretched  on  the  hay  with  all  the  fragrant  dead 
flowers  and  saintfoin  beneath  him  in  a  couch  that  was 
easier  than  the  down  of  monarchs'  beds.  He  fell  asleep, 
sleep  coming  as  lightly  and  as  swiftly  to  him  as  it  comes 
to  a  tired,  healthy  child;  a  night-bird's  wing  sometimes 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  69 

softly  touching  his  forehead,  a  cadence  from  a  monastery- 
chime  sometimes  mingling-  with  his  dreams.  When  he 
awoke  it  was  night  still ;  there  was  a  break  of  dawn  east- 
wards, but  the  stars  were  still  out,  the*  barge  was  still 
winding  its  tranquil  way  down  the  water. 

Leaning  his  arms  down  in  the  yielding  grasses  he  lay 
looking  awhile,  lazily,  at  the  mark  where  the  keel  cut  the 
stream,  at  the  dews  that  had  fallen  on  the  grasses,  at  the 
heavy  black  sails  swinging  idly  to  and  fro.  His  indo- 
lence did  not  endure  long;  a  face  near  him  caught  his 
eyes  and  his  pity;  and  with  Tricotrin  human  sympathies 
were  very  keen  and  swift,  human  woe  and  joy  the  sure 
chords  to  arouse  and  to  move  him.  The  face  he  saw  now 
was  one  of  infinite  pain  ;  it  was  the  face  of  a  man,  who, 
like  himself,  had  chosen  that  odorous  mountain  of  grasses 
and  herbs  for  a  couch;  and  who  was  lying  there  looking, 
with  wide-opened  eyes,  down  into  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the 
water  against  t  he  sides  of  the  barge. 

He  was  a  man  beyond  middle  age,  with  a  rugged, 
homely,  weather-Worn  countenance,  and  large,  black,  pa- 
thetic eyes  that,  out  of  the  roughness  of  the  other  features, 
gazed,  with  a  piteous,  sightless,  yearning  look,  into  va- 
cancy;— a  look  as  of  one;  startled  and  astray  in  some  great 
agony.  He  won;  the  usual  blouse  of  the  working-day, 
and  his  hair  was  unkempt,  his  linen  soiled,  his  hand  black 
with  the  pitch  with  which  he  had  that  day  caulked  the 
sides  of  the  barge;  but  there  was  that  in  the  mute,  in- 
tense wondering  anguish  of  the  eyes  that  gave  at  once 
grandeur  and  ex. ■ceding  pathos  to  his  aspect.  It  was  the 
look  of  a  uoble  animal  who  has  been  struck  a  cruel  blow, 
and  who  will  not  hurt  the  hand  that  struck  it,  even  in 
just  vengeance. 

Tricotrin  spoke  to  him  gently,  on  some  trifle  of  the 
night  ;  the  man  started,  answered  wearily,  then  lapsed 
into  his  former  attitude.  No  questions  fared  better;  he 
replied  to  them  with  a  certain  oppressive  effort,  but  only 
an  instant  afterward  to  fall  afresh  into  the  same  apathy 
and  absorption:  ho  was  but  a  common  sailor  or  fisher- 
man, with  QOthing  above  the  common  in  him,  vet  the  pa- 
tient, terrible  despair  upon  his  face — a  despair  as  of  one 
incessantly  seeking  what  was  lost— lent  him  dignity, 
gave  him  greatness. 


10  TRICOTRIN, 

Tricotrin  let  hirn  be ;  he  knew  how  cruel  is  the  kind- 
ness which  forces  itself  in  upon  the  silence  and  the  soli- 
tude of  calamity ;  and  he  saw  too  that  here  the  mind  was 
not  wholly  present,  that  in  some  sense  reason  had  been 
dulled  by  suffering,  though  sufficient  perception  remained 
for  the  mechanical  words  and  actions  of  daily  existence. 
He  said  no  more ;  but  in  the  still,  dark  dawn,  the  music 
of  his  violin  softly  supplied  the  place  of  speech.  There 
were  many  times  when,  through  its  manifold  voices 
speaking  in  a  universal  tongue,  he  uttered  to  himself  and 
others  what  the  words  of  his  mouth  could  not  have 
phrased.  Through  it  all  the  genius  in  him  spoke;  and 
in  it  all  the  heart  of  the  player  went  out  to  the  hearts  of 
his  fellow-men. 

The  music,  unnoticed  at  first,  failing  at  first  to  pene- 
trate the  profound  self-absorption  of  the  seaman,  reached 
his  ear  gradually,  as  wave  on  wave  of  gracious  sound 
broke  on  the  air  like  the  tide  on  a  shore  with  rhythmical 
recurrent  music.  He  did  not  note  it  as  what  it  was ;  he 
did  not  make  visible  sign  that  he  even  heard  it;  but,  grad- 
ually consciousness  of  it  stole  upon  him. 

The  music  filled  the  quiet  of  the  hour,  that  was  only 
stirred  besides  by  the  lapping  of  the  water  as  the  vessel 
glided  down ;  music  low,  and  sad,  and  sweet ;  music  like 
a  psalm  of  consolation,  with  all  the  blind  hungered  yearn- 
ing of  a  soul  adrift  upon  a  bitter  world,  told  and  an- 
swered in  it.  It  pierced  the  lethargy  that  enshrouded  a 
darkened,  desolate  mind ;  where  the  sailor  leaned,  with  his 
chin  resting  on  his  hands  and  his  eyes  gaziDg  down  into 
the  river,  a  certain  change  came  over  him,  like  the  first 
quiver  of  returning  life  into  one  half  dead  through  stu- 
por- .  great  tears  started  into  his  eyes,  softening  their 
vacancy;  he  moved  with  restless  pain,  then  started  from 
his  bed  of  hay  with  a  gesture  of  intolerable  suffering. 

"  Hush, — hush !     It  reminds  me  of  her  voice  !" 

The  music  ceased  even  as  he  spoke ;  Tricotrin  touched 
him. 

"Of  her?     Of  whom?" 

The  sailor's  eyes  turned  on  him  with  the  tears  floating 
in  their  weary  depths. 

"I  cannot  bear  it!    It  is  like  her — like  her  voice  as  she 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  71 

sung  her  ballads!"  he  muttered,  regardless  of  the  ques- 
tion, lost  only  in  the  one  memory  that  filled  the  darkened 
chambers  of  his  mind  to  the  exclusion  of  all  outward 
sight.  "I  have  lost  her,  you  know,  she  went  from  me 
so  long  ago.  One  morning  she  laughed  in  my  eyes,  and 
kissed  my  mouth,  and  threw  her  white  arms  around  my 
neck  in  play,  with  the  sun  all  so  bright  on  her  face ;  and 
at  night — at  night,  you  remember? — there  were  only 
ashes  on  the  hearth,  silence  in  the  chamber,  darkness 
everywhere.  Darkness  that  no  light  ever  breaks;  no 
light  ever  will  break, — till  I  find  her!" 

He  was  ignorant  that  he  spoke  to  one  who  had  never 
ere  then  looked  upon  his  face;  he  had  no  remembrance 
that  the  words  he  uttered  had  no  meaning  to  the  ear  that 
heard  them  ;  to  him  his  grief  filled  the  world,  his  loss  laid 
the  earth  desolate. 

Tricotrin  rested  his  hand  gently  on  the  other's  shoulder; 
he  saw  that  his  music  had  broken  the  stupor  of  the  bruin, 
and  stirred,  though  but  to  troubled  shapeless  motion,  the 
locked  thoughts  of  its  solitary  musing;  he  waited  with 
patience  to  do  more. 

"To  find  her?"  he  repeated.  "Then  this  one  whom 
you  love  is  not  dead?" 

"Dead?  No — she  is  not  dead,"  the  seaman  answered 
slowly,  while  his  great  eyes  searched  his  companion's 
with  a  heart-rending  look  of  search  and  of  bewilderment. 
"That  is  it — see  you! — she  is  not  dead.  Dead  women 
lie  cold  and  motionless,  their  fair  limbs  do  not  stir,  nor 
their  eyes  unclose,  nor  their  lips  breathe,  but  they  are 
there — you  can  hold  them,  though  their  heart  does  not 
lieal  on  yours;  you  can  caress  them,  though  your  kiss 
strikes  on  ice;  you  can  wind  their  hair  round  your  hand. 
though  they  know  your  touch  no  longer.  They  are 
there,  though  they  lie  lifeless  on. thew  bridal-beds.     But 

she  was  gone,  and  did  not  leave  even  the  beauty  of  her 
body  to  me.  The  chamber  was  dark,  still,  desolate;  there 
was  not  even  a  dead  woman  to  gather  the  sunbeams 
about  hei-,  and  to  seem  to  smile  with  their  Hgh1  on  her 
mouth  !" 

There  was  an  unutterable  tenderness  and  desolation  in 
the  answer;  his  hearer  knew  all  the  meaning  of  those 


72  TRICOTRIN, 

wandering-  pathetic  words; — there  is  a  loss  worse  than 
the  loss  that  death  causes.  He  divined  what  that  loss 
had  been;  but  he  saw  that  the  blow  it  had  dealt  had 
numbed  the  brain  of  the  man  who  suffered  by  it  out  of 
all  comprehension  of  its  truth. 

"  She  is  not  dead?"  he  said  softly.  "  Then  hope  is  still 
with  you?" 

The  puzzled,  aching-  eyes  answered  him  with  a  look 
that  struck  him  to  the  soul. 

"Hope — hope!  Yes — I  hope.  I  suppose  I  hope,  since 
I  live  on ; — but  the  years  are  many,  and  I  grow  weary. 
It  was  in  my  youth  that  I  lost  her ;  and  now  I  grow  old. 
Ever  and  again  I  think  I  behold  her;  some  girl's  laugh 
on  a  grape-wagon,  some  girl's  eyes  that  smile  at  me 
through  the  lattice  that  opens  at  dawn,  some  girl's  round 
limbs  where  they  bathe  and  float  in  the  summer  sea,  has 
something  of  her,  and  makes  me  think  I  have  found  her. 
But  it  is  never  so  ; — they  do  not  know  me;  they  have  no 
light  in  their  glance  when  they  see  me;  they  have  no 
place  in  their  hearts  for  me.  I  wander  far  and  wide ;  I 
go  east  and  west,  north  and  south,  I  seek  her  in  the  cities 
and  forests,  I  watch  before  the  palaces,  I  search  in  the 
hospital-wards,  I  look  for  her  in  the  crowds  of  the  streets, 
I  wait  for  her  in  the  loneliness  of  the  plains — all  in  vain, 
all  in  vain!" 

"Is  it  so  many  years  since  you  lost  her  ?" 

"It  is  many.  I  cannot  tell  how  many.  I  keep  no 
count.  The  seasons  come  and  go,  but  she  does  not  come 
with  them.  Ah  !  it  is  terrible  that ! — in  a  throng  to  see 
but  one  face,  in  a  world  to  hear  but  one  voice,  and  the 
face  forever  eluding,  and  the  voice  forever  mocking  you ! 
And  the  earth  is  so  wide,  you  know; — one  may  toil  on 
and  on  and  on  and  never  reach  nearer  1  The  house  is 
ready  for  her  just  as  she  left  it;  the  flowers  are  dead,  I 
cannot  help  that, — she  is  so  long  away, — but  all  is  as  she 
left  it.  I  try  always  to  keep  it  so ;  I  think  it  will  pleasure 
her  when  she  comes  back." 

His  head  dropped  on  his  chest  with  a  heavy  sigh,  the 
lethargy  stirred  for  awhile  by  the  power  of  the  music  re- 
turned ;  the  brooding  patience  settled  down  again  on  the 
features  which  for  an  instant  had  quivered  and  changed. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  f3 

He  was  not  conscious  that  he  had  spoken  to  a  stranger ; 
he  had  only  uttered  the  ever-present  thoughts  of  his  mind 
with  the  wandering  eloquence  born  of  the  intensity  of 
one  single  and  dominant  feeling. 

A  voice  called  him  to  the  farther  end  of  the  vessel: 
with  the  mechanical  instinct  of  obedience  he  swung  down 
from  the  piles  of  the  hay  and  went  whither  he  was  bid- 
den,— become  only  a  common  boatman,  gone  to  the  coiling 
of  a  rope,  the  reefing  of  a  sail. 

Tricotrin  watched  him  as  he  passed  aft  in  the  dusky 
dawn  that  was  now  faintly  reddened  by  the  first  approach 
of  day:  his  heart  ached  for  this  man  who  with  his  hard 
life  and  his  deadened  reason  could  yet  find  strength  and 
greatness  for  such  love  as  this. 

"A  woman!"  he  thought.  "The  same  old  story  ever! 
And  the  same  blow  which  pierces  Estmere's  purples 
strikes  through  the  seaman's  canvas  shirt!  There  is  no 
mail  against  that  stroke,  either  in  power  or  in  poverty." 

The  dark  handsome  head  of  the  Marseillais  looked  up 
at  him  at  that  minute  from  the  cabin  stair:  Tricotrin 
signed  him  to  come  higher  and  leant  towards  him. 

"Who  is  that  boatman  of  yours,  good  Caros?" 

Caros  raised  himself  with  a  sailor's  lightness  and  swift- 
ness on  to  the  height  of  the  mounds  of  dry  grass;  he  was 
a  gentle-hearted  man,  though  the  wild  lire  of  southern 
pirates  ran  in  his  blood,  and  to  the  one  who  had  given 
him  his  Loirais'  bride  he  bore  a  passionate  devotion. 

"You  speak  of  poor  Bruno,  my  friend?"  he  answered. 
"He  is  a  good  sailor  on  rougher  waters  than  rivers,  though 
his  brain  is  gone  for  all  but  his  work.  1  knew  him  well 
down  in  the  south ;  he  is  poor,  and  so  I  gave  him  a  berth 
and  a  turn  on  my  barge." 

"  Bruno !     Is  that  his  name  ?" 

"Jean  Bruno:  yes.  We  were  lads  together.  And  we 
were  on  the  same  craft  for  years  in  the  Mediterranean 
days.  He  was  a  fine  fellow — a  noble  fellow  —  till  she 
ruined  him." 

"His  wife?" 

"Ay!  His  wife.  We  were  lads  together,  though  lie 
looks  so  old,  ami  I — I  feel  as  young  as  Rlargol  !  lie  is 
scarce  forty,  Bruno.    1  remember  her  well ;  she  was  fifteen 

1 


74  TRICOTRIN, 

when  she  wedded  him,  and  he  a  lad  of  twenty-two.  She 
was  the  bastard  child  of  some  noble,  a  beautiful  thing,  all 
yellow  hair,  and  smiling  lips,  and  sunny  eyes,  and  white 
soft  limbs;  she  bewitched  that  black  strong  stalwart  fel- 
low, who  was  half  lion,  half  lamb.  He  adored  her — ah  1 
— as  those  great,  brave,  mild  natures  always  do  love.  It 
was  almost  terrible  to  see  how  that  soft  little  piece  of 
bright-colored  life  held  the  whole  heart  and  soul  of  the 
man  !  Well, — he  had  one  year  of  happiness,  one  year  of 
a  fool's  paradise;  he  went  short  coasting  voyages,  no 
more,  he  could  not  bear  to  be  away  from  the  little  cabin 
where  she  had  everything  he  could  get  her — birds  and 
flowers,  and  quaint  Indian  things  that  the  Indian  ships 
brought  home.  She  was  good  enough  to  him ;  a  gay, 
laughing,  sweet-tempered,  mindless  thing;  who  could 
have  thought  she  had  been  so  cruel  ?  One  day  he  bade 
her  farewell  at  dawn;  he  was  going  on  a  fishing  trip  to 
be  absent  only  the  day;  I  was  waiting  for  him  outside  the 
cabin;  I  saw  her  laugh,  and  caress  him,  and  wave  her 
hands  in  adieu.  We  went  out  to  sea.  We  were  at  sea 
all  day.  We  got  home  with  three  boats'  load  by  midnight. 
The  light  that  always  burned  in  her  cabin  was  out:  he 
flew  like  a  madman  the  half  league  down  the  shore,  and 
burst  his  door  open, — Favette  was  not  there.  Ah  God! 
to  this  day  I  have  never  forgotten  the  sight  of  Bruno  ! " 

The  Marseillais  paused ;  the  tide  of  recollection  rushed 
with  painful  force  in  on  him;  when  he  spoke  his  voice 
was  low  and  full  of  pity. 

"  It  killed  the  mind  in  him ; — shattered  it  out  of  all  sense 
of  the  truth.  We  found  the  truth  soon.  Favette  had 
gone  to  shame  ;  a  shame  that  looked  brilliant  to  her  beside 
the  innocent  quiet  sea-life  that  she  led.  The  leaven  of 
her  mother  was  in  her.  She  had  gone  to  the  stage ;  a 
great  actor  had  made  her  his  mistress.  But  Bruno  never 
knew  this.  He  could  not  comprehend  when  we  tried  to 
tell  it  him.  She  was  lost;  that  was  all  he  knew;  that  she 
had  sinned  against  him  he  would  not,  or  could  not,  under- 
stand. It  was  horrible! — he  thought  she  had  been  stolen 
from  him,  he  loved  her  so  tenderly  still !  He  has  searched 
for  her  ever  since.  Time  has  not  killed  that  love  in  him, 
though  her  crime  has  killed  his  reason.     The  little  cabin 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  75 

down  by  the  south  is- always  kept  ready  for  her  return; 

not  a  thing  is  touched;  and  meanwhile  he  wanders  all 

over  France  seeking  what  he  can  never  find !     You  know 

who  Favette  is?" 

"No.     She  lives  then  ?" 
.  "She  lives.     Lives  in — Coriolis." 
"Coriolisl     Our  great  actress! — what? — the  wife  of 
that  man?" 

"Ay !  How  many  such  women  own  even  as  good  a 
past  as  to  have  slept  on  the  honest  heart  of  an  honest  man 
they  betrayed?"  said  the  Marseillais  bitterly.  "Their 
nests  are  mostly  fouler  than  that  sea-bird's  nest.  Yes, 
she  is  Coriolis;  but  he  does  not  know  it,  mind  you. 
Though  he  seeks  her,  still  his  search  is  chiefly  south- 
ward ;  he  has  never  come  on  the  dazzling  sinner  of  Paris. 
Pray  God  that  he  never  may  1  It  is  fearful  enough,  his 
quest  for  her,  his  task  that  can  never  be  ended,  his  hope 
that  can  never  be  granted;  but  it  is  better,  at  its  worst, 
than  the  truth  could  be  to  him  if  he  ever  looked  again  on 
the  face  of  his  wife  !" 

He  said  no  more,  but  turned  quickly,  and  busied  him- 
self with  some  ropes  of  the  barge.  He  loved  little  Mar- 
got;  he  could  feel  now  for  his  comrade  as  he  had  not  felt 
in  the  years  of  their  youth. 

Tricotrin  asked  no  more.  He  knew  the  comedian  well, 
a  lovely,  heedless,  heartless  woman ;  full  of  laughter,  of 
coquetry,  of  caprice;  a  soulless,  brainless,  beautiful  thing; 
young  still,  fair  still;  with  the  beauty  of  the  japonica  or 
the  azalea — beauty  of  hue  and  form,  without  a  trace  of 
the  beauty  that  fragrance  lends  the  flower  and  feeling 
lends  the  woman.  Many  a  time  had  he  seen  the  theater 
she  graced  convulsed  with  mirth  at  her  gay  and  mis- 
chievous follies. 

The  story  had  a  great  pathos  for  him: — he  who  had 
seen  the  sparkling  gayety  of  the  wife  fell  the  full  force  of 
the  martyrdom  of  the  husband.  The  cruelty  and  the 
crime  had  been  rewarded  by  so  shadowless  a  life  of  triumph, 
— the  devotion  and  the  fealty  had  been  recompensed  by 
so  Aveary  and  endless  an  agony  ! 

"Ah,  Waif  of  mine!"  he  thought,  "will  you  ever,  I 
wonder,  destroy  a  brave  heart  like  that  lor  the  sake' of 
your  senses  and  your  vanity  ?" 


76  TRICOTRIN, 

With  sunrise  the  barge  passed  the  village  for  which  he 
was  bound.  He  was  pledged  to  the  bridal  feast  of  Yvon 
Mascarros,  or  his  heart  had  inclined  to  follow  the  fortunes 
of  that  patient  desolated  life  which  had  been  ruined  by  a 
woman's  infidelity.  He  went  up  to  Bruno,  and  bade  him 
gently  farewell.  The  seaman  lifted  his  head  from  the 
rough  work  on  which  his  hands  were  engaged,  and  replied 
with  mechanical  courtesy;  the  momentary  light  and 
reason  that  the  music  had  wakened  there  had  died  out 
from  his  features:  the  old,  darkened,  brooding,  lifeless 
pain  had  gathered  there  again. 

"  There  is  nothing  one  can  do  him  ?"  he  asked  of  Caros. 

The  Marseillais  shook  his  head. 

"Neither  God  nor  man  can  aid  him.  Who  can  give 
him  back  his  wife,  in  her  youth  and  without  her  crime  ?" 

It  was  true.  Solace  for  Bruno  could  only  come  with 
death. 

Tricotrin  watched  him  one  moment  more,  sitting  under 
the  black  shadow  of  the  sail,  with  his  fingers  working  at 
the  cordage,  and  his  eyes  looking  out  at  the  sun,  where 
it  rose  in  all  its  gloiy.  Then,  with  the  hands  of  Caros 
grasping  him  in  grateful  farewell,  and  the  bright  face  of 
little  Margot  looking,  smiling  and  sunny,  over  the  side  of 
the  barge,  he  dropped  himself  into  his  own  little  boat,  and 
rowed  himself  straight  across  the  stream  to  the  landing- 
place.  As  he  moored  it  to  land,  he  paused  a  moment 
looking  after  the  barge  where  it  drifted  slowly  on  down 
the  river,  with  the  glow  of  the  sunrise,  amber-hued  and 
ruddy,  on  the  waters  around  it. 

"  To  have  life  killed  in  one  at  twenty-three  by  a  woman ! 
— and  men  call  diseases  that  slay  outright  'cruel,'  while 
there  are  these  blows  which  murder  by  means  that  draw 
out  the  torture  through  a  quarter  of  a  century.  The 
plague  is  merciful  compared  with  a  woman  without  pity  I" 
he  thought  as  he  watched  the  form  of  Bruno,  dark  and 
motionless,  under  the  shadow  of  the  sail. 

That  thing  he  himself  had  saved  yonder,  who  was 
chasing  the  butterflies  so  joyously,  with  the  sunshine 
on  her  fair  brow,  careless  of  the  pain  they  felt — she,  too, 
would  soon  be  a  woman.  Had  he  rescued  her  from  death 
only  for  her  to  deal  death,  like  this  fond,  faithless  wanton 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  77 

that  the  sailor  had  cherished  ?  The  thought  came  to  him 
— well  as  he  loved  the  child,  well  as  all  his  years  through 
he  had  loved  her  sex. 

In  some  sense  the  weary,  lonely,  melancholy  figure  of 
the  boatman,  with  his  strong,  massive  frame  that  would 
not  perish,  and  his  jarred  aching  brain,  to  which  death 
would  have  been  so  much  mercy,  stood  out  to  him  in 
painful  contrast  with  his  memory  of  the  light,  gracious, 
golden  presence  of  the  child,  as  he  had  left  her  among  the 
scarlet  flowers  and  the  dewy  leaves.  These  were  both 
forms  of  the  same  human  life  1 

But  the  thought  was  a  bitter  cucumber  which  Tricotrin 
threw  away  in  obedience  to  his  favorite  Antoninus'  coun- 
sel. He  left  the  barge  to  pass  on  her  way;  and,  after 
bathing  in  the  river,  walked  through  summer  woods  and 
green  vineyards  to  the  village  of  his  destination,  where, 
already  in  the  early  day,  the  peasantry  were  stirring,  and 
the  young  girls  and  the  children  going  out  to  gather  wild 
lilies,  and  honeysuckles,  and  great  branches  of  roses,  to 
crown  the  head  and  strew  the  path  of  the  prettiest  among 
them,  who  was  to  wed  with  Yvon  Mascarros. 

And  there,  under  the  low  eaves  of  the  farrier's  cottage, 
or  under  the  blossoming  boughs  of  the  limes  that  sheltered 
the  house,  Tricotrin,  with  his  mirth  and  his  music,  kept 
these  innocent  revelers  gay  from  daybreak  to  nightfall, — 
gay  with  a  zest  they  never  had  unless  he  were  the  Lord 
of  Misrule.  And  the  Loirois  maidens,  with  I  heir  black 
laughing  eyes,  and  their  lithe  robust  forms,  and  their  feet 
that  flew  like  the  flash  of  phosphoric  insects,  danced  all 
through  the  sultry  summer  night  to  the  same  melodies, 
touched  by  the  same  hand  which  had  awakened  to  mo- 
mentary consciousness  of  its  own  agtfny  the  numbed  and 
stricken  heart  of  the  boatman  Bruno. 


7* 


18  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Under  the  old  sign  of  the  Comemeuse  there  was  a  gay, 
after-midnight  supper. 

It  was  not  the  Comemeuse  of  Dancourt,  of  Marivaux, 
of  Piron.  It  Was  not  the  famous,  well-beloved  cafe  of  the 
poets,  the  artists,  the  epigrammatists  of  the  eighteenth 
century;  but  it  was  a  Comemeuse  as  mirthful  if  not  as 
traditional  as  theirs. 

A  bright,  white-painted,  gas- glittering  little  house,  with 
gilded  balconies  and  tri-colored  flags,  and  tiny  chambers, 
and  open  glass  doors,  with  the  perpetual  color  and  move- 
ment of  the  Paris  crowd  under  the  trees  before  it,  and  the 
vivacious  noise  and  music  of  a  Paris  night  all  around  it. 
It  was  a  resort  of  the  bohemians, — of  the  painters,  and 
the  actors,  and  the  rhymesters, — of  those  who  make  the 
laughter  of  the  world,  and  of  those  who  limn  its  manners 
for  the  age  to  come.  Chiefly  the  artists  came  thither,  and 
within  the  little  building  there  was  scarcely  a  single  white 
panel,  or  a  single  piece  of  plaster,  that  was  not  covered 
with  the  charcoal  or  the  chalk,  the  oil-color  or  the  pen-and- 
ink  of  the  master  hands  of  France.  The  Comemeuse 
had  untold  gold  upon  its  walls;  and  the  owner  of  it,  a 
bright,  hot-blooded  man  of  the  south,  loved  the  pictured 
wails  with  all  his  soul,  and  had  never  sold  a  touch  from 
his  guests'  brushes  save  once,  when  his  daughter's  dowry 
could  not  be  found  In  any  other  wise,  when  he  had  taken 
down  a  shutter  whose  three  panels  were  rich  with  three 
great  masters'  idle  fancies,  and  had  parted  with  it  for  its 
weight  in  francs.  For  half  a  century  the  Comemeuse 
had  thus  gathered  its  wealth  upon  its  walls  and  timbers; 
and  among  its  treasures — the  treasures  its  host  valued 
most,  though  they  were  but  the  gifts  of  an  amateur — were 
some  half  dozen  female  heads,  with  all  the  grace  of  Greuze 
and  all  the  velvet  hues  of  Boucher; — heads  that  looked 
out  in  charming  coquetry  from  quaint  dark  corners,  and 


777/7  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  79 

laughed  down  from  window-nooks,  wreathed  with  flow- 
ers,— heads  under  which  the  brush  of  their  creator  had 
scrawled  carelessly,  "Tricotrin." 

"  You  could  have  beaten  us  all  if  you  would,"  had  said 
once  to  their  artist  a  painter  whose  name  stood  as  the 
Velasquez  of  his  modern  time. 

"Possibly;  but  then  Art  would  have  been  my  tyrant, 
whereas  she  is  now  my  handmaiden." 

"And  serves  you  well.  Yet,  if  you  had  let  her  rule 
you  entirely " 

"I  should  have  been  her  slave.  He  is  a  fool  who  is 
subject  to  his  mistress.  Can  he  ever  wholly  enjoy  her? 
I  doubt  it." 

"But  is  it  not  waste  of  genius  ?" 

The  wanderer  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  I  don't  say  whether  it  is  my  weakness  or  my  strength 
to  hate  the  bondage  of  anything, — even  of  Art.  I  only 
say — it  is  my  temper!" 

"But  if  every  man  had  such  a  temper?" 

"Well,  if  every  bird  were  a  lark  we  should  get  no  use- 
ful fowls  for  the  stew;  but  I  do  not  see  that  the  utility 
of  stews  to  eat  proves  any  argument  against  the  right  of 
the  larks  to  sin"-  ?" 

And  the  man  who  loved  song,  and  light,  and  green 
meadow  lands,  and  blue  sunny  skies,  like  the  larks  them- 
selves, had  taken  up  his  friend's  palette  and  sheaf  of 
brushes,  and  had  dashed  in,  in  two  hours,  a  female  head 
that  had  all  the  brown  glow,  the  voluptuous  luster  of  the 
south  in  it, — a  head  that  Titian  might  have  painted. 

lie  would  create  such  in  the  caprice  of  free  impulse; 
but  he  would  have  produced  them  as  a  trade  no  more 
than  his  fellow-bohemians,  the  larks,  will  sing  in  cellars. 

It  might  be  strength.  It  might  be  weakness.  But  it 
Was,  as  he  said,  his  temper. 

Beneath  that  same  golden,  ardent,  beaming  Hebe  face 
that  he  had  there  sketched  in  nils  on  the  panel,  he  sat 
among  his  brethren  now  a1  1  he  supper  of  the  (  ornemeuse, 

with  the  light  en  (he  leonine  beaut]  of  his  head,  and  in 
the  sparkling  laughter  of  hi,-  eye.-.  He  was  the  king  of 
the  revelry;  revelry  of  wit  and  wine,  where  tho.-e  whom 
nature  had  anointed  with  the  same  chrism  that   touched 


80  TRICOTRJN, 

Rubens's  brow  and  Shakspeare's  lips,  held  joyous,  law- 
less sovereignty;  leaning  to  kiss  ripe  scarlet  mouths  of 
women  because  they  were  men,  but  rising  to  great 
thoughts  that  left  far  beneath  them  alike  women  and  the 
worl'd,  because  they  were  also  immortals. 

His  laugh  rang  out,  tuneful  as  the  music  of  silver;  his 
wit  flashed  through  the  speech  like  meteors  through  the 
night;  his  improvisations,  full  of  irony,  of  raillery,  of 
caricature,  made  the  gay  shouts  of  his  listeners  echo  again 
and  again.  Ben  Jonson  odes,  Beaumarchais  rhymes,  Be- 
ranger  songs,  and  Breton  carols,  coursed  each  other  off 
his  lips,  in  a  wild  tournament  of  tongues;  his  own  swift 
satires  unhorsed  all  combatants,  and  as  he  drank  he 
chanted  Hellenic  bacchanal  hymns,  with  all  the  bright 
gay  grace  dT  Greece. 

He  would  have  lived  as  soon  without  light  as  without 
the  freedom  of  unfettered  mirth,  the  abandonment  of  un- 
chained gayety,  the  debonnair  enjoyment  of  the  lord  of 
misrule. 

He  loved  pleasure ;  but  he  loathed  debauch ;  when  the 
former  glided  in  its  riot  to  the  latter  he  left  the  Corne- 
meuse,  as  the  morning  dawn  began  to  break,  and  went 
out  into  the  air ;  the  wine  having  only  warmed  all  his 
poet's  fancies,  and  only  making  richer  and  fuller  still  in 
its  melody  the  ring  of  his  voice  as  he  walked  through 
Paris,  singing  aloud  the 

God  Lyoeus  ever  young, 
Ever  honored,  ever  sung, 

of  the  wine-mellowed  Elizabethan  verse. 

Tricotrin  knew  how  to  enjoy.  His  censors — and  he 
had  many — said  that  he  deemed  this  too  exclusively  the 
only  aim  of  life.  At  the  least  his  enjoyment  was  of  that 
free,  liberal,  and  gracious  fashion  which  sheds  its  light  on 
all  around  it,  and  is  never  cramped  into  egotism,  nor  dis- 
torted into  orgy. 

None  the  less  either  because  he  came  freshly  from  the 
lavishness  of  mirth  and  the  pleasures  of  the  senses  was 
he  awake  to  all  that  is  terrible,  to  all  that  is  horrible  in 
the  shame,  the  crime,  the  hunger,  the  agony  that  were 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  81 

hidden  beneath  the  marvelous   night-glitter  of  the  city 
.  through  which  he  went. 

None  the  less  because  on  his  lips  the  carol  was  so 
mirthful  of  the 

"Stained  with  blood  of  lusty  grapes 
In  a  thousand  lusty  shap  •-, 
Dance  upon  the  mazer's  brim, 
In  the  crimson  liquor  swim. 
From  the  plenteous  hand  divine, 
Let  a  river  run  with  wine, 
God  of  youth  1" 

did  he  pause  in  pity  at  the  sight  of  a  wretched  creature 
who  begged  his  alms,  though  that  pity  was  not  heard  in 
his  first  words. 

"Charity?"  quoth  Tricotrin,  to  the  appeal.  "You  ask 
for  what  men  want,  every  one  of  them,  but  love  little  to 
give.     Pass  on,  my  friend  " 

"But  bread — a  morsel  of  bread  at  least?"  moaned  the 
man,  who  had  stopped  him  in  an  obscure  street,  where 
there  were  few  other  passengers  in  the  lateness  of  the 
night. 

Tricotrin  looked  him  through  with  his  brilliant  eyes 
by  the  light  of  the  summer  moon:  he  had  no  love  for 
those  who  begged,  and  he  knew  thief  from  pauper  at 
a  glance. 

"Off  with  you!"  he  said,  amusedly.  "If  a  man  cannot 
get  a  bit  of  baked  wheat  for  himself,  in  a  world  where 
there  is  so  much  to  be  done,  he  is  not  a  fellow  worth 
keeping  in  the  world  at  all,  to  my  fancy." 

"It  is  hard  to  work!"  muttered  the  other,  who  had 
the  pure  accent  of  education. 

"Oh-he!  If  everybody  worked  in  moderation,  nobody 
need  overwork  himself.  It  is  because  there  are  so  ninny 
do-nothings — chiefly  so  many  female  drones — that  those 
who  do  at  all  do  overmuch  To  say  nothing,  that  the 
overseer  of  Greed  drives  his  slaves  a1  the  devil's  par,-." 

"  But  I  am  starving,"  moaned  the  beggar  afresh.  "And 
it  is  so  bitter  to  die!" 

"Not  at  all.  Mere  ignorant  error.  Hard  to  die?  Is 
opium-sleep  hard  after  racking  pain?     What  fools  men 


82  TRICOTRIN, 

are!     Writhing  in  famine  and  disease,  they  think  it  hard 
to  be  released  from  both!" 

"Ah,  you  have  not  felt  hunger!" — the  poor  wretch  was 
longing  for  mere  food;  to  be  epigrammatized  by  a  stranger 
in  the  desolation  of  the  streets,  little  appeased  the  ter- 
rible desire. 

Tricotrin's  eyes  softened  greatly. 

"  Have  I  not  ?"  he  said,  with  infinite  gentleness.  "  You 
mistake,  my  friend." 

"Then  for  heaven's  sake  give  me  bread!"  said  the  man 
fiercely;  for  his  growing  need  made  him  ferocious,  like  a 
desert  beast. 

"Tut!  Say  for  humanity's  sake.  Well— I  have  not 
a  sou  on  me.  I  have  spent  them  all  at  the  Comemeuse 
yonder." 

Cheated  in  his  hope,  the  starving  creature  shrank  back 
with  a  shrill  yell  of  grief,  like  a  struck  clog's;  the  sound 
went  to  the  heart  of  his  hearer,  and  outbalanced  the  pre- 
disposition against  him,  which  his  voice  and  his  features 
had  aroused. 

He  struck  the  beggar  kindly  on  the  shoulder. 

"Unphilosophic  man!  Blind  yet  to  the  advantages  of 
death?     Come  then — follow  me." 

With  his  quick,  light  step,  and  resuming  his  chant — 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher — Tricotrin  led  the  way,  through 
many  tortuous  turnings,  till  he  reached  the  quarter  of  St. 
Martin,  the  starving  wretch  following  him  in  dumb  quies- 
cence, shivering,  though  the  night  was  warm  with  all  the 
balmy  sweetness  of  a  late  French  summer. 

An  impulse  of  trust  had  made  him  accost  this  stranger, 
so  utterly  unlike  himself,  who  had  so  dauntless  a  carriage, 
and  who  had  on  his  lips  the  carol  of  such  careless  revelry. 
All  that  evening  and  night  through  he  had  vainly  sought 
pity  from  the  crowds  of  Paris,  from  the  beautiful  painted 
women,  the  men  of  wealth,  the  creatures  of  delight,  who 
swarmed  there  in  such  busy,  heedless,  glittering  throngs; 
only  this  one  man  had  given  him  what  he  sought. 

Tricotrin  let  himself  in  with  a  pass-key  into  a  house  of 
the  poor  and  crowded  quarter,  where  he  had  fixed  his 
dwelling  for  the  time.  He  was  never  stationary,  scarcely 
for  so  much  as  a  week ;  he  was  yet  freer  and  more  com- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  83 

pletely  unincumbered  than  the  Arabs,  for  he  had  not 
even  a  tent  to  bear  with  him,  but  made  his  nest  where  he 
would,  as  fancy  took  him,  like  a  yellow-hammer  in  a  high- 
way. . 

He  wanted  no  home  as  he  wanted  no  nation.  Where- 
ever  men  dwelt  he  found  both. 

lie  went  up  a  high  wooden  rickety  staircase,  very 
high,  for  he  always  chose  his  room  nearest  the  sky,  and 
bade  the  beggar  follow  him  into  the  topmost  chamber. 

It  was  a  very  large  attic,  for  he  could  endure  no  cramped 
space;  with  bare  floor  and  bare  walls;  Mistigri  curled  up 
on  a  little  straw  bed,  and  his  Attavante  and  his  Stra- 
duarius  lying  together  on  the  deal  table.  It  was  perfectly 
comfortless;  but  he  was  never  in  it  except  for  slumber, 
and  through  the  open  window  there  shone  the  sky,  star- 
studded. 

He  wasted  no  time  in  words,  but  striking  a  light  and 
going  to  a  cupboard  in  the  wall,  drew  out  a  great  roll  of 
bread,  some-  cold  meat,  an  apparatus  for  coffee  making, 
and  a  flask  of  Burgundy,  all  he  had  in  his  possession.  He 
set  the  food  before  the  beggar;  made  some  steaming 
coffee  in  five  minutes;  and  poured  him  out  as  much  wine 
as  it  was  safe  to  give  him  after  his  long  fast.  The  man 
devoured  as  only  starvation  can,  and  Tricotrin,  turning 
his  back  on  him  to  spare  him  a  witness  of  his  voracity, 
busied  himself  talking  to  Mistigri,  where  she  had  thrown 
herself  down  on  the  mattress. 

Now  and  then  he  cast  a  look  at  his  guest,  and  the  sur- 
vey did  not  please  him.  There  was  a  wolfish  keenness 
in  the  way  he  ate  which  was  of  itself  repulsive;  but  it 
was  less  this,  than  the  cast  and  expression  of  his  features 
that  displeased  his  host.  He  was  very  delicately  made, 
and  his  face  was  of  beautiful  type,  with  the  hair  cut  short 
over  the  brow,  and  falling  longer  behind;  he  was  not 
young,  but  tin'  hice  remained  youthful,  though  its  clear 
olive  skin  was  livid,  and  the  jet  black  curls  had  many 
threads  of  white  Eandsome  he  was,  handsome  as  an 
Antinous,  bul  the  beauty  was  crafty,  feline,  cowardly, 
l'u  1 !  of  latent  lust  and  cruelty,  though  such  as  would  have 
been  dangerously  comely  to  the  eyes  of  sensual  women. 

(Something  of  remembrance  came  to  Tricotrin  as  he 


84  TRICOTRIN, 

watched  him :  but  what  the  memory  was  he  could  not 
recall. 

His  meal  over,  the  man  thanked  him  with  all  the  pro- 
fusion of  southern  expletive,  and  all  the  grace  of  southern 
manner ;  there  was  that  both  in  his  speech  and  air  which 
showed  he  had  once  been  gently  nurtured,  though  now 
fallen  as  low  as  this. 

Tricotrin  seated  himself  on  the  straw  pallet,  and  listened 
silently;  he  was  pondering  what  he  could  do  for  him;  it 
was  not  his  way  to  give  men  mere  passing  aid. 

"  No  thanks,"  he  said  at  last.  "  Sit  down  again  a  minute. 
I  have  done  nothing  for  you.  In  Utopia  there  will  be  no 
want.  But  while  we  are  as  far  from  Utopia  as  we  are 
now,  we  are  bound  to  help  one  another.  Tell  me,  my 
friend — what  have  you  been?" 

"Nothing!" 

"Nothing!  The  best  thing  if  you  are  a  philosopher, 
the  worst  if  you  are  not." 

"  But  '  Philosophy  bakes  no  bread,'  as  Novalis  has  it," 
murmured  the  stranger,  with  a  mirthless  and  bitter  smile. 

Tricotrin  eyed  him  more  closely. 

"  Well — 1  am  not  altogether  sure  of  that.  At  the  least 
she  teaches  us  to  be  content,  in  default  of  bread,  with  a 
handful  of  pulse.  That  is  better  than  to  have  discontent 
and  dyspepsia  after  a  banquet.  But,  you  are  a  man  of 
education.  Did  your  sense  never  tell  you  that  it  does  not 
do  to  be  '  nothing,'  unless  one  has  a  million  to  be  it  upon  ?" 

"I  suppose  it  should  have  told  me  so,  but  I  thought 
each  day  that  the  morrow " 

"Cras  vives;  hodie  jam  vivere  Postume,  serum  est. 
Ule  sapit,  quisquis,  Postume,  vixit  heri,"  murmured 
Tricotrin ;  he  who  enjoyed  existence  with  the  versa- 
tility of  a  humorist,  the  richness  of  an  artist,  and  the 
carelessness  of  a  wanderer,  felt  as  much  contempt  as  pity 
for  those  who  wei*e  ignorant  of  the  true  secret  of  happi- 
ness— living  in  the  present. 

"Martial  might  have  remembered,"  said  the  sufferer, 
quickly,  "that  there  are  some  people  who  never  get  a 
chance  of  'living,'  worth  anything  at  all,  either  yester- 
day, to-day,  or  to-morrow." 

"  Humph!    The  wise  man  compels  chance.    However, 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  85 

some  want  a  good  opportunity,  as  bad  swimmers  want 
an  air  belt.  We  will  see  if  we  cannot  furnish  you  with 
one.  But  first  be  more  explicit  with  me.,  What  has  been 
your  career?" 

The  stranger  hesitated. 

"A  checkered  one,"  he  said,  bitterly.  "Now  in  sun- 
shine, now  in  darkness.  I  have  known  what  it  is  to  be 
rich,  successful,  triumphant;  I  have  known  pleasure,  and 
abundance,  and  women's  loves.  But — in  a  word — I  have 
been  a  gamester ;  and  the  good  fortune  that  crowned  me 
so  long  has  forsaken  me  for  the  last  score  of  years,  till — 
till — I  have  become  what  you  see  me!" 

The  tears  stood  in  his  eyes;  he  pitied  himself  with 
exceeding  pity,  and  regarded  his  fate,  as  every  gambler 
does,  as  the  cruel  result  of  a  combination  of  cruel  con- 
spiracies. 

"A  gambler!"  echoed  Tricotrin.  "How  could  you 
say  you  were  nothing?  You  are  of  the  trade  that  ruins, 
more  souls  than  any  other,  except  the  trade  that  women 
drive  in  love.  A  gambler!  Bah!  to  peril  all  your  brain, 
and  your  peace,  and  your  future  on  the  caprice  of  the  turn 
of  a  wheel !  Why,  to  pin  them  on  the  faith  of  a  woman 
is  not  more  foolish,  and  is  far  more  poetic!" 

"You  are  pleased  to  jest  at  my  misery!"  muttered  the 
other,  sullenly. 

"Nay.  I  jest  at  no  misery,"  said  Tricotrin,  earnestly. 
"God  forbid!  But  if  you  have  no  other  resource  than 
play,  it  is  difficult  indeed  to  see  how  to  aid  you.  Could 
I  give  you  thousands  they  would  all  go  in  one  night  of 
hazard!" 

"I  used  to  have  such  luck!  How  could  I  tell  that 
those  devils  of  cards  would  only  mock  me  as  age  came 
on  me?" 

The  question  was  piteous  and  passionate — he  deemed 
himself  wronged  as  by  some  base  treachery,  by  the  change; 
of  the  chance  thai  used  to  smile  on  him. 

Tricotrin  looked  at  him  in  silence:  his  compassion  for 
the  evident  wretchedness  and  dire  want  of  the  man  re- 
strained the  scornful  satire  that  rose  to  his  lips  on  this 
folly  of  first  trusting,  and  then  recriminating,  hazard. 

"In  what  fashion  would  }Tou  most  like  me  to  aid  you?" 

8 


86  TRIC0TR1N, 

he  asked  at  length.  "I  am  poor  myself;  yet  I  could  put 
you  in  many  ways  of  earning  bread,  if  you  were  one  of 
those  who  were  willing  to  labor  for  it." 

"Yon  recommend  labor — but  you  follow  pleasure,  I 
believe.     That  is  a  common  anomaly!" 

The  ingratitude  of  the  graceless  retort  to  the  one  who 
had  just  succored  him  in  starvation,  grated  on  Tricotrin's 
ear ;  but  he  did  not  suffer  it  to  influence  him.  This  man 
was  in  necessity;  in  Tricotrin's  catholic  humanity  that 
fact  excused  all  bitterness  in  him. 

"You  judge  of  what  you  know  nothing,"  he  said, 
simply.  "  Pleasure  is  but  labor  to  those  who  do  not  know 
also  that  labor  in  its  turn  is  pleasure.  But  we  have  to  do 
with  your  concerns,  not  with  mine.  Can  you  tell  me  more 
of  your  life, — though  you  have  epitomized  it  in  that  one 
word,  Play?" 

"What  use  would  it  be?"  moaned  the  other,  wearily. 
"I  have  said,  I  had  my  enjoyments,  my  conquests,  my 
indulgences  years  ago — years  ago  !  Of  late — for  many  a 
long  "day  —  I  have  done  nothing  save  hang  over  the 
gaming-tables,  on  which  I  had  often  not  even  a  coin  to 
stake!  I  have  been  a  fool — oh,  yes!  I  know  it  as  well 
as  you  can  tell  it  me.  And  why?  Because  I  had  never 
the  courage  to  be  wicked  enough!  It  is  the  man  who  is 
timorous  in  crime,  who  alone  fails  to  make  crime  a  fair 
mistress,  and  a  good  paymaster!" 

As  he  uttered  the  one-sided  warped  truth,  his  delicate 
face  worked  and  darkened  with  a  spirit  of  evil  which 
looked  as  though  only  the  power,  but  never  the  will, 
had  been  lacking  in  him  to  give  himself  wholly  over 
to  sin. 

Tricotrin  saw  that,  but  he  passed  over  the  speech  with- 
out reply  to  it. 

"What  is  your  country?"  he  asked,  simply. 

"By  birth  I  am  Greek." 

A  darkness  passed  over  his  hearer's  face. 

"  Slang  has  made  Greek  synonym  for  Cheat!  Popular 
instincts  rarely  err.  And  you  are  'noble'  by  birth  too,  I 
suppose?" 

The  stranger  winced  under  the  ironic  and  contemptu- 
ous intonation  of  the  sentence.     He  made  no  answer; 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  87 

feeling  his  host's  lustrous  eyes  were  fixed  like  an  eagle's 
on  him. 

"Every  Hellenic  scoundrel  is  descended  from  the 
Pisistratidse,  or  the  Alcmoeonidae,  if  we  believe  his  state- 
ment on  the  matter!"  said  Tricotrin,  with  the  same 
disdainful  accent  in  his  phrase.  "What  may  your 
name  be?" 

"Paulus  Canaris." 

"What!" 

As  the  word  leapt  from  his  throat  he  leapt  himself  on 
to  the  Greek,  with  his  hand  on  the  weakly  and  subtle 
form,  that  writhed  impotently  in  his  grasp. 

"Thief — traitor — hound!"  he  cried,  with  the  intensity 
of  passion  reiterating  through  the  words,  while  to  and 
fro  in  his  irresistible  grasp  he  swung  the  stranger  as 
easily  as  though  he  held  a  dog.  Speechless,  breathless, 
paralyzed,  the  man  strove  in  vain  to  get  free  from  this 
fiery  and  instant  wrath,  which  had  thus  broken  up  from 
the  genial  and  sunny  mirth  of  the  one  who  had  fed  him 
and  succored  him. 

"What  have  I  done?"  he  gasped.  "Is  this  your  hos- 
pitality?" 

Struck  by  the  last  word  as  by  a  lash,  Tricotrin  loosed 
and  shook  him  from  him. 

"You  have  broken  my  bread — you  are  sacred.  But 
for  that— by  God!"— 

The  oath  was  stifled  in  his  throat;  breathing  fast  and. 
loud,  controlling  with  strong  effort  the  passion  which 
possessed  him,  he  fell  back  from  the  gamester,  with  his 
back  against  the  casement,  seeking  the  air  by  instinct,  as 
a  hound  after  combat  seeks  water. 

"What  is  my  crime?"  murmured  the  other,  halting, 
panting,  blanched  with  fear.  "What  do  you  know  of 
me?" 

"I  know  you — as  the  paramour  of  Estmere's  wife!" 

The  Greek's  features  ctcw  livid,  and  all  his  delicate 
limbs  trembled  as  with  palsy. 

"Estmerel     Who  are  you  then ?" 

"No  matter  thai !  I  know  all  your  life;  adulterer,  liar, 
betrayer,  thief!" 

The   furious   words   coursed   swiftly  on  each  other; 


88  TRICOTRIN, 

leaning  back  against  the  attic  window,  with  his  arms 
crossed  on  his  chest  as  though  to  withhold  himself  from 
violence  against  the  man  made  sacred  by  having  eaten 
of  his  salt,  Tricotrin  stood  gazing  on  him,  with  his  eyes 
aflame  like  a  lion's,  and  the  night  wind  blowing  his  hair. 

The  Greek  cowered  under  that  look  as  under  some 
physical  torture;  he  had  no  conception  of  who  the  man 
was  who  thus  arraigned  him,  he  had  no  conception  of 
why  his  wrath  was  thus  aroused  against  the  paramour 
of  the  wife  of  another,  but  he  knew  that  the  vileness  of 
his  own  life  had  been  seen  by  these  eyes  that  pierced 
him  with  their  accusation  and  their  scorn. 

"You  use  bitter  words,"  he  muttered  at  length,  in 
the  ague  of  fear.  "Who  are  you — in  God's  name,  who 
are  you?" 

'"Blaspheme  God,  you  who  betrayed  man!"  cried 
Tricotrin,  his  passion  once  more  striving  for  mastery. 
"No  matter  who  I  am — suffice  it  I  am  one  who  knows 
you.  If  you  had  not  eaten  of  my  bread  I  would  choke 
your  crimes  down  your  throat  with  the  vengeance  on 
you  that  you  merit.  You  are  safe  with  me  being  under 
my  roof,  having  sat  at  my  board.     But  for  that " 

He  ceased ;  his  breath  came  loud  and  hard,  it  went 
sore  with  him  to  let  this  man  pass  out  in  peace.  But  he 
would  not  break  the  bond  that  made  the  guest  sacred  to 
him,  by  the  old  grand  law  of  nomad  tribes;  and  he  would 
not  forswear  his  word.  With  a  swift  movement  he 
turned,  swept  out  the  few  gold  coins  his  cupboard  held, 
and  threw  them  down  at  his  debtor's  feet,  with  a  gesture 
of  speechless  scorn. 

"I  keep  my  promise  even  with  things  as  vile  as  you. 
There  is  your  'chance.'     Take  it,  and  begone  I" 

The  Greek  cowered  and  shrank  with  shame,  with  ter- 
ror, with  repugnance.  He  hesitated  an  instant,  the  dire 
fear  upon  him  conflicting  with  the  lustful  impulse  for  the 
gold,  that  moved  him  to  take  it  even  at  this  cost.  For  an 
instant  even  the  debased  nature  of  the  man  recoiled  from 
accepting  succor  given  thus.  Then, — so  low  had  he 
fallen, — he  stooped,  with  a  hurried,  furtive  action,  caught 
the  coins  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  and  slunk  out  in  his 
ravening  greed. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  89 

He  was  ashamed ;  but  avarice  conquered  shame. 

He  went  stealthily  down  the  staircase,  up  which  his 
preserver  had  so  lately  brought  him,  and  out  through  the 
narrow  door.  The  owner  of  the  house  was  just  up,  in 
the  dawn,  and  washing  down  his  passages  with  brooni 
and  water,  singing  cheerily  a  rhythm  of  his  old  birth- 
country,  Berri. 

"Who  lives  in  your  fifth  story?"  the  Greek  whispered 
to  him. 

The  gay,  good-humored  Berrois  smiled. 

"Ah,  ha!  The  attic  has  a  prince  indeed  1  Do  you  not 
know  him?     Why,  all  Paris  knows  Tricotrin." 

"  Tricotrin!"  murmured  Paulus  Canaris,  as  he  slunk  on- 
ward into  the  early  daylight;  the  name  told  him  nothing; 
he  had  never  heard  it.  It  increased  his  perplexity  and 
his  terror.  He  hastened  to  forget  both  in  trying  his 
"  chance"  at  the  nearest  gambling  den  ;  but  he  registered 
the  name  in  his  memory. 

AVhen  he  was  left  alone,  Tricotrin  stood  at  the  open 
window,  his  passion  quivering  still,  hot  and  bitter,  through 
his  blood.  It  was  rarely  that  rage  or  grief  ever  mastered 
the  mellow,  happy,  and  abundant  life  within  him ;  but  when 
he  gave  way  to  either,  the  emotion  was  terrible,  the  hour 
of  his  abandonment  to  it  was  very  dark. 

Forte  e  Vaceto  di  viri1  dolce. 

For  a  long  time  he  stood  there,  combating  the  hatred 
and  the  remembrance  that  were  so  heavy  on  him.  Then 
he  shook  himself,  as  lions  shake  their  manes.  The  dew 
was  wet  on  his  forehead;  his  face  was  flushed  red  with 
the  fury  he  had  restrained;  his  chest  heaved  with  quick- 
ened breaths.  He  stretched  his  hand  out,  and  dashed  to 
shivers  the  glass  from  which  the  Greek  had  drunk.  As 
the  pieces  foil  lie  smiled  sadly,  in  rebuke  of  his  own  un- 
controlled and  boyish  action. 

"  Mistigri,"he  murmured,  "  a  philosopher  should  be  as 
unmoved  seeing  his  foes  as  his  friends.  A  philosopher, 
decidedly,  should  not  keep  such  a  puerility  as  a  Fast.  J 
am  disgusted  with  myself,  Mistigri.  Scold,  scold,  if  you 
like;  that  is  a  favorite  way  with  your  sex  of  showing 
sympathy:  and  I  deserve  it.  Bah,  Mistigri  I  even  a  phi- 
losopher is  mortal  when  his  personality  is  touched.     I 

8* 


90  TRICOTRIN, 

should  have  been  vile  enough  not  to  have  given  that  man 
food  if  I  had  known  whom  it  was  that  I  fed.  How  con- 
temptible that  I  A  clear  human  duty  broken  for  a  private 
sentiment!" 

Mistigri  made  a  murmuring,  affectionate  noise,  as 
though  deprecatory  of  his  self-condemnation,  and  compre- 
hensive that  Man  was  still  too  near  his  progenitor  Monkey 
not  to  instinctively  give  blow  for  blow. 

"  Clearly  contemptible,  Mistigri  I"  continued  her  owner 
with  a  smile,  for  his  moods  passed  as' rapidly  as  April 
days  from  storm  to  sunshine.  "  Lacedemonian  Charellus 
was  perfectly  right.  '  By  the  gods,  if  I  were  not  in  wrath 
with  you  I  would  have  you  slain.'  He  knew  how  wrath 
obscures  reason.  Wise  man !  And  we  degenerate  moderns 
allege  our  anger  as  the  very  motive  to  strike !  Let  us 
banish  the  dark  spirit,  Mistigri.  It  is  the  ruin  of  all 
peace,  and  the  foe  of  all  philosophy  !" 

And  to  banish  it,  Tricotrin  took  up  his  perpetual  con- 
solers,— his  violin  and  his  meerschaum,  and  smoking  the 
one  drew  music  from  the  other.  Whenever  his  joyous 
serenity  was  broken  he  restored  its  peace  by  the  same 
spell  as  gave  back  sanity  to  Philip  of  Spain  and  Saul  to 
Israel. 

When  does  the  artist  ever  so  wholly  escape  from  the 
oppression  of  the  world  around  him  as  when  he  enters 
the  world  of  his  own  creation? 

The  music  stole  out  from  the  open  casement  into  the 
warm  gray  dawn;  and  as  it  floated  downward  and  up- 
ward on  the  quiet  air,  it  breathed  its  beauty  out  over  the 
crowded  roofs  of  Paris. 

Homeless  outcasts,  wandering  footsore,  heard  it,  and 
turned  backward  from  where  their  steps  were  leading 
them  to  the  brink  of  the  black  river.  Lost  women,  des- 
perate because  they  could  not  glean  the  foul  wages  of  sin, 
caught  the  sweet  fugitive  echoes,  and  thought  with  a  pang 
of  long  dead  days,  when  they  had  leaned,  in  innocence  and 
infancy,  against  their  mothers'  knees.  And  one  little 
child  in  the  street  below,  thrust  out  to  steal  with  brutal 
blows,  and  fearful  of  returning  because  his  hands  were 
empty,  listened  where  he  lay,  upon  a  doorstep,  naked, 
hungry,  sobbing, — listened  till  he  fell  asleep,  with  a  smile 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  91 

upon  his  pale  bruised  lips,  and  dreamed  of  flowers  and  of 
sunlight,  and  of  the  pitying  faces  of  angels. 

Thus  Tricotrin  soothed  other  souls  beside  his  own. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

"Grand'mere!"  cried  Yiva;  "there  is  Sarazin!  and  he 
is  going  up  to  Villiers  ;  and  he  says  he  will  take  us  both 
there,  if  you  will  come;  and  we  shall  see  all  its  glories; 
and  he  has  a.niece  in  the  dairies,  with  whom  we  can  stay 
and  sup;  and  he  will  bring  us  back  in  the  evening  time. 
Say  yes!  oh,  do  say  yes !" 

It  was  very  early  morning.  Grand'mere  was  boiling 
the  breakfast  coffee,  and  let  the  pot  fall  over  on  to  the 
burning  wood  as  she  started  and  turned  at  the  Waif's 
breathless  and  passionate  exordium. 

"  Sarazin  1  Sarazin  is  a  good  creature,  and  it  would  be 
a  pleasure  for  thee,"  she  said,  hesitatingly;  "but  then — 
Tricotrin?" 

"  Tricotrin  I"  cried  Yiva,  with  eager  impatience.  "  Tri- 
cotrin says  there  is  no  better  soul  than  Sarazin ;  and  he 
always  likes  me  to  have  pleasure, — you  know  that,  grand'- 
mere !  And  the  sail  there  and  back !  and  the  sight  of  the 
chateau  I     Oh,  come,  come,  come!" 

"  Call  Sarazin  in  to  breakfast,  and  I  will  talk  with  him," 
answered  grand'mere,  evasively,  but  knowing  well  in  her 
heart  that  the  child  always  got  her  own  way. 

Sarazin  entered  willingly.  lie  was  a  little  wizen,  sun- 
burnt, hardy  creature,  with  a  shell  as  tough  asacocoanut, 
and  a  temper  as  sweet  as  its  milk.  He  was  the  only  fer- 
ryman near  for  leagues,  and  was  devoted  to  the  service 
of  Yiva,  who  was  as  capricious  and  exacting  as  most  fair 
mistresses  are,  and  who  owed  the  sunniest  hours  of  her 
sunny  life  to  him  and  his  clumsy  old  boats. 

One  of  the  peasanl  proprietors  had  hired  him  to  take 
up  a  load  of  wheal  thai  had  been  purchased  by  the  stew- 
ards of  Yilliers.    He  was  to  leave  his  grandson  in  charge 


92  TRICOTRIN, 

of  the  ferry,  and  himself  conduct  the  corn  barge  to  the 
great  chateau:  nothing  loth,  for  it  was  rarely  that  he  had 
a  chance  of  quitting  his  lonely  boathouse ;  and  to  go  up  to 
Villiers  was  a  great  event  in  the  lives  of  the  scattered 
river  people  of  the  neighboring  hamlets. 

Grand'mere,  troubled  with  an  indistinct  remembrance 
that  Tricotrin  had  once  expressed  a  wish  that  Viva  should 
never  be  taken  thither,  but  unable  to  recall  it  plainly 
enough  to  be  satisfied  in  opposing  the  child's  entreaty, 
yielded  with  a  certain  disquietude,  and  locked  up  her 
dwelling,  and  went  down  the  towing-path  with  a  worried 
conviction  that  if  she  were  not  doing  rightly  he  would 
hear  of  her  action  from  the  swallows  that  lived  by  the 
hundred  under  her  eaves. 

"Why  do  you  always  watch  the  birds  so?"  she  had 
asked  him  one  day. 

"  Because  I  have  found  out  what  Francois  d'Assisse 
did  not,  that  they  can  talk  better  to  me  than  I  to  them. 
They  tell  and  teach  me  many  things,  though  the  art  of 
flying  remains  uncommunicated." 

And  grand'mere  had  received  his  speech  literally;  and 
had  never  since  then  seen  the  swallows  fly  in  and  out  of 
their  nests  under  the  ivy  without  a  certain  awed  convic- 
tion that  they  listened,  and  saw,  and  took  tidings  to  their 
fellow  wanderer. 

"However,  there  can  be  no  harm,"  she  thought  now; 
"the  little  one  is  with  me  and  Sarazin." 

The  big  brown  sailing  boat,  with  its  load  of  corn,  was 
ready;  the  horses  of  the  wagon  that  had  brought  the 
wheat  stood  half  asleep  upon  the  shore,  hock-deep  in  grass 
and  rushes;  the  little  quaint  ferryboat  peered  out  of  a 
nest  of  vines  and  fruit-laden  pear-trees,  and  tall  leafy  pop 
lars.  The  whole  was  a  lovely  study  of  morning  light  and 
peaceful  labor. 

But  Viva  heeded  little  of  that;  rejoicing  in  it,  after  a 
vague,  unconscious  fashion,  as  a  plant  rejoices  in  sweet 
air,  but  never  pausing  to  think  of  it  with  any  poet's  deep, 
inborn  delight.  This  was  not  in  her.  She  was  too  essen- 
tially  feminine;  too  radiantly  self-engrossed.  What  she 
thought  of  was,  that  the  peasants  who  had  brought  the 
wheat,  and  the  boys  who  were  in  the  boat,  and  the  very 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  93 

ferry  dog  asleep  in  the  sun,  all  gave  her  welcome  because 
they  found  her  fair. 

Under  the  shadow  flung  by  the  sail,  beneath  the  yellow 
pile  of  the  corn,  while  the  old  woman  sat  knitting,  and 
scarce  looking  up  as  the  shores  drifted  by,  Viva,  lying 
full  length  on  a  plank,  passed  down  the  river, — slowly, 
dreamily,  as  before  her  Tricotrin  had  done  on  the  hay- 
barge. 

She  loved  nothing  better  than  these  long  summer  sails; 
and  to  her  fancy,  in  that  lustrous  sunshine,  the  old  boat 
became  a  gilded  galley,  the  brown  wheat  golden  treasures, 
the  torn  tarred  sail  a  silken  canopy,  the  gliding  banks  her 
kingdoms,  and  she  a  Cleopatra  or  a  Catherine  of  Cyprus, 
sailing  onward  to  land  at  the  marble  steps  of  matchless 
palaces.  For  she  had  the  one  enchanted  power — Youth 
— with  which  the  linen  folds  seem  robes  of  purple,  the 
chaplet  of  cowslips  becomes  a  monarch's  crown,  the 
wooden  bench  is  as  an  ivory  throne  of  empire. 

"She  dreams, — that  child!"  murmured  grand'mere  to 
the  ferry-keeper. 

"  The  young  always  dream,"  answered  Sarazin.  "  That 
is  their  kingdom  of  heaven." 

"Whose  end  is  hell!" 

"Nay,  not  so.  Look  you,  there  are  holy  dreams,  and 
they  end  mostly  in  the  cloister ;  and  there  are  happy 
dreams,  and  they  mostly  fold  their  wings  in  their  hus- 
bands'chimney-corners;  and  there  are " 

"  Such  dreams  as  hers,"  said  grand'mere,  with  a  mo- 
tion of  her  head  toward  the  child.  "  And  they — if  they 
do  not  end  in  an  empress's  diadem,  which  cannot  be,  peo- 
ple all  say,  out  of  fairy  stories — they  end  in  misery,  and 
sin,  and  shame!" 

Little  Sarazin  looked  affrighted. 

"What  then?"  he  whispered;  "you  think  the  devil 
talks  at  that  pretty  rosy  ear  ?" 

Grand'mere  shook  her  head  in  doubt. 

"Sarazin,  how  that  may  be,  I  know  not;  but  I  do  not 
think  there  is  any  cause  for  the  devil  to  talk  when  a 
woman-child  that  is  fair  dreams  of  her  own  face." 

"That  is  true,"  said  Sarazin:  and  he  went  to  the  steer- 
ing of  his  boat,  while  the  old  woman  drooped  her  head 


94  TRICOTRIN, 

over  her  knitting;  and  Viva  watched  the  gliding  shores 
with  eyes  that  only  saw  the  dim  and  glorious  shapes  of 
some  imagined  future. 

They  had  started  so  early  that  Villiers  was  reached  by 
noon,  for  the  tide  served  them,  and  the  wind  also.  Sara- 
zin  went  about  his  errand ;  but  he  first  asked  permission 
for  the  old  dame  and  the  child  to  wander  through  the 
park,  and  gardens,  and  building;  and,  since  his  niece  had 
some  favor  in  the  household,  obtained  it. 

Through  the  sunny  alleys,  the  fragrant  avenues,  the 
sweet,  still,  orange-shaded  ways,  and  the  beds  of  gor- 
geous blossom,  the  little  bent  figure  of  grand'mere,  in  her 
white  headgear  and  blue  gown,  with  Viva's  bright,  gay, 
ever-moving  form  at  her  side,  passed  in  the  sultry  Au- 
gust noon. 

The  voluble  dairy-girl  was  their  guide,  chattering  end- 
lessly:  but  Viva  paid  no  heed  to  her.  She  was  absorbed 
in  contemplation;  in  wonder  as  to  the  great  man  who 
dwelt  here;  and  in  fugitive  fancies  as  to  the  possibilities 
of  her  own  right  to  some  such  superb  domain  as  this. 
"Estmere — Estmere — Estmere!"  she  repeated  over  and 
over  again  to  herself.     " Is  he  a  king,  I  wonder?" 

She  had  the  haziest  ideas  as  to  ranks  and  habits.  There 
were,  to  her  own  thinking,  but  two  classes — the  peasants, 
with  whom  she  was  assured  she  had  no  link  in  common; 
and  the  princes,  with  whom  she  was  certain  of  affinity. 

"  Does  it  not  make  thee  afraid  ?"  whispered  Sarazin's 
niece,  in  an  awed  whisper,  as  she  led  them  through  the 
splendors  of  the  banqueting-hall. 

Viva  tossed  back  her  sunlit  head. 

"Afraid  !  I  am  in  my  native  air — that  is  all !" 

The  dairymaid,  daughter  of  very  poor  and  abject  char- 
coal burners  of  the  forest,  looked  at  her  and  crossed  her- 
self; it  was  true,  then,  she  thought,  that  this  Waif  of 
Tricotrin's  came  of  no  mortal  mould.  What  Viva  said 
was  true  :  although  she  had  never  known  but  the  sim- 
plest mode  of  existence,  though  her  milk  and  bread  had 
been  served  in  a  wooden  bowl,  and  though  her  restless 
feet  had  danced  over  a  bare  brick  floor  ever  since  they 
had  first  danced  at  all,  the  child  felt  born  to  greatness: 
and  things  of  beauty,  luxury,  or  splendor  always  seemed 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  95 

to  her  to  belong  to  some  native  and  beloved  sphere  from 
which  she  had  been  banished.  There  are  daughters  and 
sons  o£  cotters  who  feel  thus  ;  and  it  is  they  who  give  the 
world  its  magnificent  actresses,  its  merciless  adventur- 
esses, its  heaven-born  statesmen,  its  Russian  Catherines, 
its  victorious  Rienzis.  As  likewise  there  are  daughters 
and  sons  of  monarchs  that  wear  their  purples  in  uncouth 
clumsiness,  and  cling  to  swinish  tastes  and  ways,  and 
look  like  boors  amid  their  own  court  circles. 

uHe  is  not  here  ?  not  the  great  lord  ?"  she  asked  once, 
with  a  pang  of  disappointment. 

"Silly  one!"  cried  the  dairy-girl.  "Should  we  be  in 
these  rooms  if  he  were?" 

"  Why  not ?"  said  Viva  in  haughty  wrath.  "He  would 
let  me  be  at  the  least :  you  should  have  seen  how  he 
bowed  to  mel" 

And  little  by  little  she  dropped  aside  and  wandered 
away  from  grand 'mere  and  Sarazin's  niece :  when  she 
glanced  at  the  great  mirrors  that  they  passed  she  saw 
how  utterly  unfitting  to  the  place  looked  the  little  brown 
shriveled  figure  of  the  good  old  woman,  and  the  plump, 
coarse  form  of  the  milkmaid,  with  their  serge  gowns,  and 
their  linen  caps,  and  their  heavy,  wooden  shoes ;  and  she 
grew  impatient  and  ashamed  of  her  proximity  to  them. 
She  liked  best  to  roam  through  the  chateau  alone,  and 
when  she  met  any  of  the  household,  glide  by  them  unseen; 
and  so  she  got  away  by  herself  and  strayed  at  ease,  dream- 
ing a  thousand  dreams  through  the  halls,  and  chambers, 
and  corridors  of  Villiers. 

Once,  twice,  thrice,  she  noticed  portraits  of  its  owner; 
and  stood  before  them  with  rapt,  uplifted  eyes  and  folded 
hands;  his  face  had  a  strong  fascination  for  her,  but  the 
chief  spell  of  his  power  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  was  the 
first  "  great  prince"  she  had  ever  seen.  For  Viva,  the 
offspring  of  hazard,  who  had  no  more  ancestry  than  any 
blue  cornflower  that  opened  to  the  sun,  and  knew  no  more 
whence  she  came  than  any  gold-spotted  moth  fluttering 
up  in  the  starlight,  was,  by  instinct,  a  passionate  aristo- 
crat ;  and  adored  what  she  did  not  possess  with  all  the 
half-envious,  half-generous  obstinacy  of  a  thoroughly  femi- 
aine  nature. 


96  TRIOOTRIN, 

No  one  interfered  with  her :  she  went  where  she  would; 
and,  absorbed  in  her  own  thoughts,  which  were  a  curious, 
vague  mixture  of  pain,  pleasure,  wonder,  desire,  irritation, 
and  enjoyment,  unanalyzed  as  a  child's  thoughts  are,  she 
never  remembered  that  her  "grand'mere"  might  be  un- 
easy at  her  absence,  or  vexed  by  her  abandonment. 
Things  of  Viva's  type  very  seldom  do  think  of  others. 

Straying  about  thus  by  herself,  she  came  at  last  into 
the  picture-galleries ;  she  had  an  instinctive  love  of  pic- 
tures, born  partly  of  her  passion  for  color,  partly  of  her 
impulses  toward  graceful  form  and  fair  ideals. 

Except  the  sketches  of  Tricotrin  she  had  never  seen 
any  paintings  save  those  in  the  nunnery-chapel;  and 
hour  after  hour  went  by  with  her  like  enchantment  in  the 
presence  of  the  Cuyps  and  Claudes,  Salvators  and  Titians, 
Liberis  and  Tan  Horns.  To  the  eyes  of  a  young  and 
imaginative  creature  the  painter  is  as  a  magician,  and 
each  picture  becomes  a  mirror  of  gramarye. 

The  works  that  appealed  to  the  soul,  the  beatitudes 
and  the  martyrdoms  of  spiritual  art,  of  divine  aspiration, 
were  dumb  to  her;  but  the  works  that  were  full  of  fra- 
grance, of  color,  of  splendor,  of  magnificent  fancy,  the 
works  that  appealed  to  the  senses  by  the  highest  forms 
of  sensuous  beauty,  filled  her  with  a  rapturous  delight. 

A  tall,  frail,  white-haired  old  man,  the  custodian  of  the 
galleries,  seeing  her  enter,  watched  her  long  himself  un- 
seen ;  it  was  so  seldom  that  any  footfall  was  heard  in  his 
solitude,  that  the  presence  of  this  vivacious,  beautiful, 
unknown  child  was  very  welcome  to  him. 

He  approached  her  at  last,  and  spoke :  Viva,  wakened 
out  of  her  trance,  and  ever  ready  with  speech,  answered 
him  gladly,  and  told  him  how  she  came  thither,  and  all 
else  that  he  chose  to  ask  of  her;  while  in  turn  she  rained 
questions  upon  him.  To  these  he  replied  cautiously :  he 
was  a  devoted  servant  of  the  house,  and  there  were  things 
in  their  lord's  life  of  which  the  servants  never  gossiped. 
But  of  the  pictures  he  discoursed  readily:  and  told  her 
what  she  would  of  their  histories. 

Though  gifted  with  the  "charming  facile  talents  that 
make,  under  culture,  bewitching  and  brilliant  women, 
Viva  was  very  ignorant :  almost  as  ignorant  in  knowledge 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  9? 

as  she  was  intelligent  in  perception,  owing  less  to  the 
nuns'  mode  of  teaching  than  to  her  own  radiant  idleness, 
and  her  incurable  hatred  of  trouble.  The  old  custos  was 
pleased  to  find  a  listener  for  his  lore,  and  she  was  well 
amusea  with  his  stories  :  to  the  genealogies  and  histories 
of  the  works  she  lent  indeed  but  a  listless  ear,  to  the  an- 
ecdotes he  told  her  of  the  portraits  she  gave  an  eager  at- 
tention. Human  life  interested  her  more  than  any  other 
thing:  she  had  seen  so  few  forms  of  it;  it  was  environed 
to  her  sight  with  such  magical  mystery ;  and  it  lay  in  her 
hands  like  an  unopened  casket  from  which  all  the  gifts  of 
the  gods  would  one  day  arise  to  her. 

One  portrait  attracted  her  in  especial. 

It  was  the  portrait  of  a  boy,  quite  young,  standing  up 
to  his  knees  in  shallow  water  and  flowering  "bulrushes, 
with  a  wounded  water-bird  in  his  hand.  The  singular 
charm  of  the  picture  lay  in  the  union  of  his  sunlit  and 
fearless  radiance  of  boyish  beauty,  and  the  tearful,  tender, 
wistful  compassion  in  his  eyes  as  he  regarded  the  .stricken 
bird.  She  was  of  too  heedless  a  temper  to  be  very  piti- 
ful herself;  yet  the  study  moved  her  and  riveted  her 
gaze  :  it  was  life-size,  the  work  of  a  great  artist,  and  bore 
surety — which  some  portraits  do  even  to  those  who  know 
not  their  subjects — of  being  a  faithful  resemblance  of  the 
original  it  re-created. 

"  \Vrho  is  that  boy  ?"  she  asked  softly,  at  length. 

The  old  man  sighed: 

"One  who  died  long  ago." 

"Died  !— oh,  he  looks  so  full  of  life  l» 

"  The  brightest  flowers  are  always  the  quickest  to  fade: 
how  long  the  brown  wallflower  lives,  but  the  purple  con- 
volvulus withers  with  its  noon." 

She  was  used  to  such  fanciful  speech,  and  it  heightened 
her  interest  in  the  portrait. 

"  Will  you  tell  me  of  him?  was  he  well  known  to  you?" 

"Yes:  long  years  ago,  in  another  land  than  this. 
Move  you  into  the  shade — there,  t  he  sun  fails  still  on  his 
face.  I  will  tell  JOM  I  he  tale  if  you  Wish.  There  is  no 
shame  in  it  " 

He  Stopped;  there  was  one  history  in  his  lord's  life 
that  was  dark  with  shame,  a  shame  that  every  soul  in  his 

9 


98  TRICOTRIN, 

great  households  had  felt  as  their  own  dishonor  when  it 
had  touched  their  master's  name. 

"  Tell  me !"  cried  Viva,  happy  in  her  new  companion, 
eager  for  a  new  history,  forgetful  that  the  anxious  heart 
of  the  old  woman  Virelois  would  be  ere  this  palpitating 
in  wonder  and  terror  at  her  absence.  "  Tell  me  !"  she 
cried,  with  her  bright  eyes  fastened  on  the  fair  eyes  of 
the  boy. 

And  the  old  man  told  her : 

"  It  was  long  ago  that  yon  lad  lived.  I  was  young 
myself  in  those  days.  My  lord — not  this  lord,  but  his 
father — was  a  wild  and  lawless  man;  proud  beyond  all, 
but  given  over  to  his  passions,  which  were  stronger  yet 
than  even  his  pride.  He  was  always  known  as  the  Mad 
Earl.  The  world  thought  his  madness  surely  proved 
when  in  his  travels  he  wedded  a  fisher  girl, — from  the  sea- 
cabins  away  to  the  west,  there,  by  the  Biscay  Waters. 
I  have  heard  that  they  are  very  proud  also — those  fishing 
people  of  the  sands  of  Olonne  ;  that  she  refused  to  him 
to  be  aught  save  his  wife.  But  you  know  nothing  of 
these  things — I  forget.  Well,  he  brought  her  home ;  there 
were  none  to  say  him  nay:  she  was  a  magnificent  creat- 
ure, daring,  beautiful,  free  of  limb,  carrying  herself  like 
a  fleet  forest  doe.  But  of  course  there  was  a  strange  dif- 
ference betwixt  her  and  the  women  of  his  own  rank.  She 
was  as  a  wild  mare  of  the  desert,  and  they  as  the  stalled, 
slender,  pampered  Spanish  jennets,  and  the  trammels  of 
splendor  were  chains  on  her,  and  the  tyranny  of  pomp 
was  a  curb  that  forever  fretted  and  galled  her. 

"  In  her  own  national  garb  she  looked  an  empress  :  but 
in  a  patrician's  robes  she  was — a  noble  thing  imprisoned, 
that  made  one  ready  to  weep.  She  bore  a  son  in  the  first 
year:  and  I  think  the  only  happy  moments  she  knew 
grew  out  of  the  boy.  For  her  husband,  repenting  his  act, 
took  a  hatred  to  her ;  and  he  was  passionate  and  hot  and 
cruel,  and  would  scourge  her  with  many  hard  words  of 
scorn.  And  that  hatred  for  her  spread  to  her  son :  he 
would  scarce  bear  the  sight  of  the  child, — yet  a  nobler 
little  lad  never  breathed.  The  child  loved  his  mother, 
and  felt  the  cruelty  to  her,  though  he  was  but  an  infant 
when  it*  came  to  an  end : — she  died  when  he  was  only  a 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  99 

few  years  old,  worn  out  by  futile  pain  and  loss  of  liberty, 
like  a  captive  leopardess. 

"  My  lord  went  into  distant  lands,  and  took  another 
wife  in  her  stead, — this  time  the  daughter  Qf  a  Russian 
prince;  and  when  in  time  she  also  brought  him  a  son  his 
bitterness  grew  greater  j^et  against  his  heir  who  had 
sprung  from  a  race  of  French  fishers.  He  would  scarce 
ever  see  the  boy;  and  never  saw  him  without  a  mocking 
taunt  or  a  brutal  glance.  But  the  two  children  grew  up  to- 
gether with  some  seven  years  between  them,  and  nothing 
could  exceed  the  love  in  which  they  held  each  other. 
The  difference  of  age  only  seemed  to  serve  to  draw  them 
closer  together.  My  lord  and  his  wife  were  seldom  with 
them;  they  lived  in  the  great  world,  and  the  boys  were 
left,  with  the  care  of  able  scholars,  in  the  heart  of  the  old 
Beauinanoir  woods.  Only,  at  such  rare  times  as  the  cas- 
tle was  filled  with  guests,  it  was  always  the  younger  that 
was  displayed  and  caressed  and  adored,  the  elder  was  al- 
most banished.  But  no  venom  came  between  them  ;  there 
was  naught  of  the  Cain  in  the  one,  there  was  generous 
childish  love  in  tin;  ether.  Lord  ChanreUon — that  was 
the  heir's  title — had  much  of  his  mother  in  him;  he  was 
too  proud  to  complain,  and  he  gave  back  scorn  for  scorn 
with  his  father.  One  day  when  he  was  fifteen, — he  was 
younger  when  that  picture  you  see  there  was  painted, — 
my  lord  and  he  came  in  collision.  The  quarrel  was 
brought  about  by  a  noble  dog  that  the  Earl  commanded 
to  be  killed,  under  some  specious  pretext,  but  chiefly,  it 
was  well  known,  because  Lord  ChanreUon  loved  the  poor 
brute.  Wild  words  came  on  that  scon;  between  them:. 
ChanreUon  was  mail  wiih  rage  and  anguish,  and  said 
fiery  and  furious  things  in  his  dead  mother's  name;  and 
my  lord  cursed  him  aloud,  and  prayed  that  he  mighl  be 
struck  dead  rather  than  ever  miter  into  his  heritage.  It 
was  an  awful  scene; — but  the  whole  household  were  for 
the  boy,  and  pitied  him,  and  honored  him  only  the  more, 
for  he  was  t  he  beloved  one  of  qs  all,  and  we  knew  that  he 
was  in  the  right,  and  mortally  Btung,  and  wounded,  and 
incensed.  Well, — the  night  of  thai  day  some  rare  jewels 
were  missing: — they -required  to  be  reset,  and  had  been 
left  in  a  casket  :  great  search  and  demand  were  made  for 


100  TRICOTRIN, 

them :  and  my  lord,  blind  with  wine  and  with  hate, 
charged  his  eldest-born  with  the  theft  of  the  diamonds. 
Ah  ! — if  you  had  seen  the  lad's  face  in  that  hour !  I 
never  beheld  a  thing  so  beautiful !  its  unutterable  scorn, 
its  speechless  amaze,  its  luminous  truth  and  honor  that 
any  dolt  must  have  read  in  its  gaze !  He  never  made 
answer  to  the  foul  foolish  charge ; — he  only  drew  himself 
straight  as  an  arrow,  with  his  head  proudly  poised  like  a 
stag's,  and  looked  his  father  hard  and  full  in  the  eyes. 
Then  without  a  word  he  passed  from  the  chamber. 

"  It  was  near  midnight  then : — when  the  sun  rose  he 
was  missing.  We  scoured  park  and  forest  and  hamlet, 
we  hunted  through  brake  and  plantation,  we  dragged 
water,  and  we  loosed  his  own  bloodhound  out  on  the 
track.  His  young  brother  said  that  he  had  been  wakened 
by  Chanrelion  leaning  over  him  and  kissing  him  on  his 
mouth,  and  murmuring,  '  You  shall  have  it  all,  my  darling 
— be  brave  and  noble  and  true  ;'  but  he  had  been  still  half 
asleep,  and  had  thought  it  only  a  dream.  However,  it 
had  been  no  dream — it  must  have  been  a  terrible  truth. 
For  toward  eventide  we  raked  up  his  cap  entangled 
among  the  water-lilies  on  the  moat,  and  a  poacher  crept 
forward  and  confessed  that  about  the  dawn  he  had  heard 
a  dull  splash  in  the  water  and  had  stolen  away — fright- 
ened, not  daring  to  see  what  caused  it.  So  then  we  knew 
he  was  dead : — and  the  young  one  grieved  for  him  as  a 
lamb  for  its  mother." 

The  old  man  paused ;  his  voice  failed  him ;  the  time  of 
his  sorrow  seemed  fresh  to  him  as  that  of  a  day  just  gone 
by,  and  his  gaze  was  fixed  on  the  fair  tender  face  of  the 
boy  that  looked  clown  from  above  in  the  sunlight. 

Viva  listened ;  hushed  and  wondering. 

"  Why  do  you  think  that  he  died?"  she  asked  at  length. 

"Why?  why?  Child!  does  not  your  own  heart  tell 
you?" 

"But  to  leave  such  a  splendid  heritage?"  she  mur- 
mured. 

"  Well, — there  are  some  to  whom  there  is  no  heritage 
worth  aught  save  their  own  stainless  honor. "  Lord  Chan- 
relion was  one  of  them.     He  had   the   sea-lion's  blood 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         101 

of  his  mother's  race,  and  taunts  had  lashed  that  wild, 
brave,  untamable  blood  into  fury " 

Yiva  mused  awhile  wistfully ;  the  history  touched  her, 
and  yet  she  understood  the  impulse  of  the  dead  heir  as 
little  as  young-  Pompeius,  with  his  insatiate  and  dazzled 
vanity,  could  understand  the  supreme  scorn  and  sacrifice, 
half  contempt  half  generosity,  of  the  Sullan  renunciation. 

"And  you  never  knew  more  of  his  fate  ?"  she  whis- 
pered, with  a  certain  sense  of  dread  as  the  light  died  off 
from  the  portrait  while  a  passing  cloud  swept  over  the 
sun. 

"  What  more  was  there  to  know  ?  We  searched  for  his 
body;  but  we  felt  that  the  search  was  useless,  for  the 
moat  was  fed  by  subterranean  waters  whose  channels  ran 
deep,  and  passed  out  to  the  ocean.  The  child  had  been 
pierced  to  the  quick  by  the  scorn  cast  on  his  lost  mother 
and  the  bitterness  flung  on  himself.  He  had  been  falsely 
accused.  To  tempers  like  his  there  is  no  more  unpardon- 
able wound.  He  was  ever  impetuous  and  warm  to  pas- 
sion, though  those  who  knew  him  aright  could  lead  him 
by  his  affections  with  a  cord  of  silk.  Well, — the  Earl 
felt  remorse,  I  know :  he  suffered  keenly  for  awhile ;  but 
the  boy  that  he  loved  was  heir  now,  and  this  soon  sufficed 
to  console  him.  The  lad  himself— -my  present  lord — felt 
far  more  enduring  grief.  For  a  long  time  he  was  as  one 
who  had  lost  all  the  treasure  he  owned.  He  had  wor- 
shiped his  elder  brother:  and  the  tragedy  left  its  sorrow 
on  him  for  so  long  that  I  think  his  nature  never  wholly 
recovered  its  elasticity;  it  made  him  grave  beyond  his 
years,  though  he  was  so  young  when  it  happened." 

"  Does  he  ever  think  of  it  now  ?" 

"Ah!  who  can  say?  My  lord  is  a  great  man,  and 
lives  in  a  greal  world.  He  may  have  utterly  forgotten — 
I  know  not.  For  thirty  years  none  have  ever  heard  him 
allude  to  his  dead  half-brother.  Men  as  high  as  lie  have 
fleeting  memories.  Vet — sometimes  1  fancy  he  remem- 
bers his  playmate,  for  when  he  purchased  this  place  and 
selected  it  as  his  favorite  residence,  he  ordered  this  por- 
trait among  others  to  be  brought  hither.  That  would 
look  as  though  all  remembrance  had  not  perished? — hovv- 

9* 


102  TRICOT  R  IN, 

ever,  that  also  is  many  years  ago  now,  and  recollection 
withers  under  eminence." 

"  I  saw  him  once,  not  long  ago,"  whispered  Viva,  "  and 
I  thought  that  he  looked  like  a  sovereign." 

"He  is  a  great  man."  said  the  old  servant  briefly: — her 
sympathies  were  chiefly  with  the  lofty  and  brilliant  life 
whose  power  and  strength  and  dominion  allured  her  fancy: 
his  were  with  the  young,  rash,  noble  life  snapped  in  twain 
so  early,  like  a  young  pine  broken  by  the  first  autumnal 
storm. 

He  looked  at  her  half  curiously  half  angrily. 

"You  have  not  much  heart,  you  fair  thing!"  he  mut- 
tered as  he  moved  away  :  Viva  laughed  a  little  to  herself, 
— she  remembered  that  the  Count's  daughter  at  the  con- 
vent had  said  it  was  "  provincial"  to  feel  emotion,  and  she 
accepted  his  remark  as  a  compliment  to  her  own  aris- 
tocracy. 

The  sun  was  still  clouded,  and  there  was  a  gray  shadow 
lying  across  the  face  of  the  portrait,  as  she  gave  one  lin- 
gering farewell  glance  to  it,  and  fluttered  on  to  gaze  in 
entranced  delight  at  the  velvet  beauties  of  Boucher,  the 
pictured  pageants  of  Versailles,  the  rose-wreathed  laugh- 
ing goddesses  of  Watteau. 

The  old  man,  disappointed,  went  back  to  his  nook  in 
one  of  the  embayed  casements,  and  bent  afresh  over  a 
manuscript  catalogue  of  his  beloved  collection,  which  had 
been  a  labor  of  love  with  him  for  many  years  ;  he  took  no 
more  heed  of  her,  but  when  later  on  she  passed  him  with 
a  gay  farewell,  flying  with  swift  feet  down  the  long  gal- 
leries, he  murmured  after  her : 

"You  will  never  harm  yourself  for  another's  sake,  you 
handsome,  wanton  dragonfly,  though  many  may  suffer  for 
yours,  like  enough  !" 

Viva  did  not  hear:  she  was  out  of  the  picture-galleries 
and  pursuing  her  adventures  through  the  building,  with 
her  long,  fair,  tumbled  hair  flying  behind  her  like  a  comet's 
golden  train. 

"Oh  how  foolish  he  must  have  been  to  have  given  up 
this!"  she  thought:  the  boy's  face  haunted  her,  but  his 
history  failed  to  touch  her  because  it  seemed  to  her  a  mad- 
ness so  absolute  and  so  insensate  to  fling  away  such  proud 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         103 

inheritances  for  the  mere  sake  of  a  stung  honor  and  a  dead 
mother's  memory.  She  had  been  always  caressed,  in- 
dulged, adored;  she  had  a  charming  innocent  vanity  that 
made  any  doubt  of  herself  impossible ;  she  was  never 
wounded  by  any  shame  at  her  fate,  because  she  was  so 
perfectly  assured  that  her  birth  must  be  royal  at  least,  if 
not  more  than  mortal.  To  comprehend  the  sensitive  pride 
that  had  refused  to  accept  honors  begrudged;  the  fiery 
impulse  that  had  refused  to  remain  a  burden  to  a  race 
that  had  rejected  his  mother;  the  childlike  chivalry  of 
tenderness  that  had  chosen  rather  to  perish  than  live,  bar- 
ring out  the  brother  he  loved  from  his  heritage;  was  im- 
possible to  her:  their  nobility,  indeed,  she  saw;  but  what 
she  felt  far  more  clearly  was  their  overwrought  and  head- 
long self-ruin. 

She  wandered  on,  through  the  reception-rooms  and 
conservatories,  as  idly  and  as  gayly  as  a  bird  wanders 
through  a  rosiery,  and  paused  once  more  in  breathless 
amaze  of  wondering  delight  in  the  midst  of  the  tropical 
houses.  She  who  had  never  beheld  any  flowers  save  the 
flowers  of  the  field  and  the  woods,  had  never  seen  aught 
in  her  dreams  equal  to  these  glorious  blossoms  of  purple 
and  scarlet  and  amber,  these  gigantic  perfume-breathing 
lilies,  these  marvelous  parasites  with  their  net-work  of 
color,  these  palms  like  the  columns  of  some  Solomon's 
Temple. 

She  was  in  perfect  solitude:  there  was  nothing  living 
beside  herself  save  the  canaries  and  lovebirds  and  cocka- 
toos that  made  their  home  amid  the  profuse  vegetation. 
She  sank  down  on  the  marble  steps  of  the  entrance,  en- 
tranced;  scarcely  breathing,  yet  almost  laughing  with 
ecstasy.  As  the  hues  of  the  Bouchers  and  Watteaua  had 
enchanted  her  eyes,  so  this  wilderness  of  color,  this  delir- 
ium of  perfume,  intoxicated  her  senses.  She  clasped  her 
hands  above  her  head  in  rupture. 

"Ah!"  she  cried  aloud  to  the  wandering  birds;  "ah, 
this  must  have  been  the  world  I  belonged  to! — this  was 
the  kingdom  of  my  birth!" 

To  her  it  seemed  far  likelier  that  she  had  sprung  from 
the  violet  chalice  of  some  superb  flower,  such  as  those 
thai  hung  by  the  thousand  around  her,  than  that  anything 


104  TRICOTRIN, 

of  want,  of  humiliation,  of  human  care  or  human  shame, 
should  ever  have  weighed  with  her. 

Her  origin  was  a  mystery;  her  existence  was  dependent 
upon  charity;  her  only  recollections  were  of  the  homely 
hearth  of  an  old  peasant  woman :  but  this  made  no  dif- 
ference to  Viva.  She  believed  devoutly  in  the  splendor 
of  her  own  descent,  and  gazing  down  the  maze  of  tropical 
color,  and  drawing  in  the  delicious  odors  of  the  magic 
flowers,  it  seemed  to  her  that  she  only  revisited  the  place 
of  her  birth,  that  she  only  breathed  the  air  that  she  had 
used  to  breathe  in  her  native  land. 

And  whether  this  was  in  truth  the  awakening  of  dim 
infant  memories  and  associations  long  lost  but  unforgot- 
ten,  or  whether  it  was  but  the  fancied  glories  of  an  imag- 
ination steeped  in  fairy  lore  and  legendary  fantasies,  she 
never  asked  herself.  To  her  own  persuasion,  lying  on 
these  marble  steps,  under  these  wondrous  coils  of  blossom, 
she  was  like  the  slumbering  princess  of  the  enchanted 
forest,  who  waited  for  her  coming  hero,  for  the  advent  of 
her  empire.  And  dreaming  thus  in  the  hot  atmosphere, 
in  the  intense  perfume,  in  the  lulling  of  the  fountains  that 
played  near,  the  sultry  fragrance  overcame  her,  her  head 
sank  down  upon  the  marble,  and  she  fell  asleep. 

Lying  thus,  canopied  by  the  purple-flowering  vine  of 
the  Pacific,  with  her  flushed  cheek  on  the  white  stone  and 
her  lips  lightly  parted,  and  the  cambric  of  her  boddice  half 
open,  showing  the  rise  and  fall  of  her  snowy  chest,  a 
youth,  coming  in  through  the  orangeries,  saw  her,  and 
started  and  paused.  He  was  a  handsome  boy,  with 
brown  delicate  features,  and  dark  slumbrous  eyes,  that 
lighted  and  smiled  as  they  fell  on  her. 

"A  little  peasant  with  a  princess's  face!  Where  can 
she  come  from,  I  wonder?"  he  thought,  as  he  stooped 
down  from  the  stair  above  her  on  which  his  steps  had 
been  arrested,  and  looked  long  and  closely  at  her  as  she 
slept.  He  was  moved  and  thrilled  with  her  loveliness ; 
but  he  did  not  hesitate  to  study  it  mercilessly  in  its  un- 
consciousness :  he  only  hesitated  as  to  whether  or  no  he 
should  waken  her. 

He  could  learn  who  she  was  without  her  aid;  and  she 
might  raise  some  alarm  if  she  were  startled. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         105 

He  guessed  that  she  came  from  some  one  of  the  ham- 
lets, and  had  strayed  in  thither,  and  fallen  asleep  through 
the  heat  of  the  day  and  the  hot-houses.  He  bent  down 
one  moment,  on  an  impulse  to  awaken  her  by  kisses  on 
her  cheek;  but  some  look  on  her  face,  even  in  its  igno- 
rance of  slumber,  repressed  the  impulse  as  it  rose.  He 
scarcely  dared  to  adventure  that  mode  of  calling  her  back 
to  the  sentient  world.  He  gazed  at  her  long,  and  drew 
some  of  her  curls  through  his  hands.  She  was  unlike 
any  one  of  the  peasant  girls  whom  he  had  ever  seen  among 
the  vineyards  or  on  the  river  barges :  he  felt  a  difference 
that  he  could  not  have  analyzed. 

Then,  moving  very  softly,  he  gathered  some  of  the 
finest  fruit  from  the  grapes  and  oranges  that  hung  above- 
head,  laid  them  down  on  her  blue  kirtle  without  wakening 
her,  and  drawing  off  a  ring  from  his  hand,  slipped  it  over 
a  branch  of  yellow  jasmine,  and  left  it  with  the  fruit  on 
her  lap.  Then,  laughing  to  himself,  he  moved  away,  and 
out  of  the  tropical  houses. 

"The  pretty  fool  will  think  they  came  from  paradise  1" 
he  mused.  "It  will  be  the  best  mode  to  rouse  her  to  in- 
terest:  nothing  allures  a  woman  like  a  mystery !  Who 
can  she  be?  but  that  can  soon  be  learned." 

Viva  slept  on,  unconscious  of  her  gazer  and  her  gifts. 
The  day  was  far  advanced  when  she  awoke  with  a  start, 
as  a  loriot  flying  past  her  brushed  her  forehead  with  his 
wing.  Her  eyes  were  barely  opened  ere  she  saw  the 
fruit  and  flower  and  jewel  on  her  lap;  she  gave  a  loud 
cry,  half  of  terror,  half  of  delight.  By  her  they  were  be- 
lieved to  be  as  surely  fallen  from  a  supernatural  hand  as 
Dorothea's  roses  and  apples  which  were  sent  from  Eden 
to  convince  the  scoffer  and  the  skeptic. 

The  place  filled  her  with  a  sudden  affright.  The  birds 
seemed  elves,  the  flowers  seemed  like  glistening  eyes. 
The  odors  and' the  heat  stilled  her;  the  cadence  of  the 
fountains  sounded  like  fairies' music,  she  gathered  all 
the  presents  up  in  her  linen  skirt,  and  lied  headlong  out 
from  the  winter-gardens,  and  under  the  colonnades  of 
orangeries,  and  forth  into  the  fresh  air,  hardly  knowing 
what  she  did,  but  believing  that  she  bore  some  fairy's 
treasures  with  her;  calling  aloud  on  Sarazin  and  grand'- 


106  TRICOTRIN, 

mere,  and  half  delirious  with  the  wonder  of  her  own  great- 
ness, that  thus  marked  her  out  for  such  especial  favor 
from  this  elfin  world  which  was  unseen  by  common  eyes. 

She  had  some  recollection  of  the  way  she  had  come 
from  the  out-houses  where  Sarazin's  niece  had  her  dwell- 
ing; and  she  rushed  on  and  on,  across  the  gardens,  down 
the  terraces,  over  the  lawns,  along  the  avenues,  all  on  fire 
with  her  marvelous  story,  panting  and  thirsting  to  gain 
a  listener.  Instinct  took  her  right,  and  she  dashed  head- 
long into  the  wide  cool  chamber,  with  its  blue  and  white 
Dutch  tiles,  and  its  sweet,  wholesome  scent  of  cows  and 
of  milk,  of  thyme  and  of  clover,  where  the  dairy-women 
were  clustered  around  the  old  Virelois  who  was  sobbing 
and  wringing  her  hands,  and  calling  on  the  Virgin  and 
Tricotrin  to  aid  and  forgive  her,  for  she  had  lost  the  child. 

Viva,  utterly  regardless  of  the  woe  that  she  had  caused, 
bounded  into  their  midst,  and  held  the  jasmine  branch, 
with  its  yellow  stars,  before  their  astonished  eyes. 

"Grand'mere,  grand'mere!  Look  here  1  You  and  I 
knew  that  I  was  not  as  others  are.  See  what  the  fairies 
have  sent  me!" 

The  old  woman,  breaking  from  the  circle  of  her  sym- 
pathizers, threw  her  arms  round  her  recovered  treasure, 
scolding  and  caressing  her,  praising  the  saints  and  reprov- 
ing the  wanderer,  all  in  one  breath :  but  Viva  shook  aside 
her  embrace  with  a  certain  impatience. 

"I  had  a  right  to  go  where  I  chose!"  she  cried;  "and 
look  here!  were  not  these  well  worth  the  straying  for? 
Oh,  you  do  not  know  what  I  have  seen, — such  things! 
such  things!  And  I  fell  asleep  at  last  in  the  temple  of 
the  flowers;  and  while  I  slept  it  was  all  changed,  and 
every  blossom  turned  into  a  fairy,  and  every  bird  into 
a  wood-elf;  and  when  I  awoke  there  were  these  in  my 
lap,  and  the  magic  ring  hung  on  the  great  amber  jas- 
mine !' 

Her  audience  were  dumb  with  solemn  amaze.  Viva, 
unconscious  of  her  own  exaggeration,  and  working  herself 
into  the  full  credence  that  all  had  been  as  she  told  it,  stood 
in  their  circle  proud  with  all  the  pride  of  one  selected  by 
fate  for  an  extraordinary  distinction,  and  smiling  on  them 
with  contemptuous  benignity. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         107 

"Oh !  you  have  never  known  such  a  wonder — you!"  she 
said,  with  scorn  at  the  mutterings  of  the  awe-stricken 
dairy-women.  "  Of  course  you  have  not;  one  must  be  of 
that  world  ere  one  beholds  it.  Your  cows  chew  the  daisies 
and  buttercups,  oDly  tasting  in  them  food  to  make  milk  : 
but  none  the  less  do  fairies  and  elves  live  under  the  grasses 
for  those  who  have  sight  that  can  see  them.  Yes;  it  was 
all  as  I  tell  you.  The  place  was  full  of  a  glory,  and  I 
heard  the  most  exquisite  music — so  softl  so  soft! — and 
you  can  feel  the  fruit,  and  smell  it,  and  eat  it,  if  you  doubt ; 
and  you  can  take  the  jasmine  in  your  hand,  if  you  like, 
and  watch  the  ring  on  it  sparkle  and  flash  !" 

"  It  is  very  strange !"  murmured  Grand'  mere  anxiously, 
while  among  the  women  the  myth  soon  grew  into  an 
article  of  faith,  with  the  giant  growth  of  any  popular  de- 
lusion ;  but  they  held  aloof  from  touching  either  the  fruit 
or  the  flower. 

"  You  are  afraid !"  cried  Viva,  with  more  and  more  cruel 
disdain.  "Do  you  suppose  they  would  give  what  would 
hurt  me  ?" — and  she  pressed  a  peach  to  her  curling  red  lips. 

Grand'mere  caught  her  hand  with  a  scream. 

"Child!  child!  If  the  fruit  be  unholy  !- 


a 


Pooh !"  laughed  Viva,  setting  her  pearly  teeth  in  the 
luscious,  juicy  pulp. 

They  watched  her,  expecting  some  horrible  change ; 
what  they  knew  not :  but  all  they  saw  was  a  child  enjoy- 
ing a  fruit.  Viva,  however,  had  only  done  it  out  of  bra- 
vado. She  was  not  by  any  means  secure  herself  that 
some  extraordinary  transformation  might  not  take  place 
in  her,  though. she  had  too  much  of  the  Eve  to  resist  the 
temptation  of  trying ;  and  she  felt  a  sense  of  relief  that  she 
would  have  scorned  to  have  acknowledged  when  the  peach 
was  eaten  down  to  its  stone,  and  no  awful  results  had 
ensued. 

Encouraged  by  her  exemption  from  evil,  the  women 
ventured  at  length  to  stretch  timid  hands  out  for  the  jas- 
mine bough,  and  gaze  at  the  ring  that  hung  on  it,  and 
babble  among  themselves  with  voluble  excitability. 
Qrand'mere's  face  alone  remained  wistful  and  anxious, 
and  her  tongue  was  mute. 

"  It  is  truly  a  noble  bauble,"  was  all  she  said  ;  "but  how 


108  TRICOTRIN, 

canst  thou  tell,  child,  whether  it  will  give  thee  pleasure 
or  pain  ?     It  came  to  thee  for  an  act  of  disobedience." 

Viva,  infuriated,  and  full  of  outraged  dignity,  seized 
the  jasmine  out  of  her  hand,  and  went  off  by  herself  to  a 
distant  nook  of  the  dairy,  and  began  counting  her  grapes 
and  her  oranges. 

"  You  are  a  set  of  senseless  peasants  1"  she  muttered  : 
the  brown  bright  mouse-like  eyes  of  the  old  woman  were 
dimmed  a  moment  with  tears  she  would  not  shed;  but 
Viva,  engrossed  in  making  the  sunset  rays  play  on  her 
jewel,  never  saw  that  dumb  reproach. 

The  milk-women  were  very  angered,  and  called  her  a 
spoilt  insolent  baby,  and  jabbered  hard  things  of  her  in 
under-tones,  and  began  to  believe  all  this  magical  story  a 
lie.  She  cast  one  glance  of  supreme  scorn  upon  them, 
then  turned  her  back  to  them  where  she  sat  on  her  stool, 
and  put  the  jasmine  on  her  hair,  and  the  ring  on  her 
finger. 

There  was  a  pleasant  meal  set  ready  in  the  dairy  cham- 
ber, of  honey,  and  cakes,  and  coffee,  and  hard  eggs;  a 
meal  whose  enjoyment  her  absence  and  the  anxiety  it  had 
involved,  had  spoiled  and  postponed.  Sarazin's  niece 
came  kindly  though  shyly  to  her  and  pressed  her  to  join 
in  it;  Viva  was  extremely  hungry,  having  eaten  nothing 
since  her  forenoon  bread  and  chestnuts  in  the  boat,  but 
she  was  too  proud  to  deign  to  acknowledge  it,  and  would 
have  died  of  starvation  rather  than  have  shared  in  their 
supper.  She  shook  her  head  in  petulant  negative :  and 
sat  alone  eating  her  fairy  grapes,  which  were  delicious  in- 
deed, but  unsatisfactory,  save  to  her  pride. 

When  the  time  came  to  leave  the  dairy-house  for  the 
boat,  she  vouchsafed  them  never  a  word,  but  swept  out 
through  the  huge  brass  pans  on  the  floor  with  the  step  of 
a  young  sovereign,  and  passed  into  the  soft  gray  evening 
with  the  jasmine  crown  glittering  like  a  wreath  of  golden 
stars  upon  her  head. 

"If  that  be  how  jewels  change  the  temper,  they  must 
be  the  curse  of  the  world,"  muttered  grand'mere. . 

Viva  heard:  but  she  would  not  deign  to  reply. 

"  She  is  a  vain  wicked  thing :  she  will  bring  the  Vire- 
lois  to  shame,"  said  one  of  the  dairy-maids,  standing  with 
arms  akimbo,  on  the  lintel  of  the  door. 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         109 

"  Do  you  believe  in  that  story  ?  She  told  it  like  the 
truth  ?"  asked  another. 

"It  maybe;  such  things  have  been  known,"  said  a 
third,  cautiously. 

"  But  we  have  lived  here  all  our  lives,  and  never  heard 
of  the  like  at  Villiers,"  responded  the  skeptic  from  the 
doorway.  "If  the  young  lord  were  here,  I  should  say  it 
was  one  of  his  tricks." 

The  conclave  laughed,  the  suggestion  was  agreeable: 
to  have  traced  an  envied  distinction  to  a  fount  of  evil  is 
the  sweetest  palliative  to  jealous  mortification. 

"She  called  us  peasants,"  continued  the  cynic  in  the 
porch.  "  I  had  a  good  mind  to  tell  her  we  were  not  bas- 
tards, but  knew  who  our  mothers  and  fathers  were,  which 
is  much  more  than  she  can  say,  and  I  would  have  said  it 
too,  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  poor  old  grand'mere," — 
and  she  plucked  a  spray  of  honeysuckle  from  the  outside 
wall  and  bit  it  spitefully,  regretting  her  excess  of  good 
nature. 

Over  the  broad  green  pastures  that  stretched  around 
the  dairies,  two  herdsmen  came  driving  up  some  of  the 
cows  to  their  stalls,  pretty  smooth-hided  lowing  creatures, 
with  sweet-toned  bells  that  sounded  pleasantly  through 
the  evening  stillness.  Both  animals  and  men  were  well 
at  Villiers;  they  were  never  overtasked,  and  they  were 
ever  gently  treated. 

"What  news,  friend  Jourdan?"  called  out  the  girl 
from  the  doorway,  to  the  cowherd  nearer  her.  There 
was  very  little  news  at  Villiers  at  such  seasons  as  its 
lord  was  absent. 

"Piffirie  has  foaled,"  said  Jourdan,  meaning  a  favorite 
farm  mare. 

"Ah,  bah  1    And  what  else?" 

"The  mill  people  say  their  son  has  got  a  first-class 
medal  at  Paris  for  his  painting.  Thou  rememberest 
him? — that  idle  simpleton  who  was  forever  chalking  over 
the  stable  walls,  and  staring  at  dirt  and  stones  and 
mosses';"' 

"A  medal!  And  the  fool  could  not  drive  a  cow 
Straight!"  laughed  the  woman,  with  her  hands  in  her 
side.     "What  else?" 

10 


110  TRICOTRIN, 

"Nothing.  Yes,  wait, — the  bull  Georgeo  broke  his 
feeding  tether,  and  led  us  a  fine  dance  this  morning ;  and 
they  tell  me  the  young  seigneur  has  come  back  unex- 
pectedly, and  will  stay  here  some  weeks.  He  is  in  dis- 
grace for  some  freak  ;  so  they  say " 

And  he  passed  on  with  his  herd  to  the  fresh-smelling, 
fresh-foddered  stables  away  to  the  left. 

The  dairy-girl  in  the  porch  clapped  her  hands  above 
her  head,  and  shouted  with  gleeful  triumph. 

"I  said  if  he  only  were  backl  Do  ye  hear,  Paule, 
Claudine,  Lisette  ?  He  is  back !  Ah,  ha !  So  much  for 
the  tale  of  the  fairies !  so  much  for  the  worth  of  her 
truth  1  The  ring,  the  ring  1  It  is  not  a  marriage  ring,  I 
guess — ha,  ha!" 

And  she  laughed  till  the  rafters  rang  where  she  stood 
under  the  honeysuckles ;— for  jealousy  is  cruel  as  the 
grave. 

The  boat  went  home  in  silence.  Sarazin  was  tired; 
grand'mere  full  of  thought;  the  child's  heart  swelled 
with  rage  and  pride  where  she  sat  with  her  hands  full  of 
the  magic  fruits,  and  her  eyes  watching  the  star-rays 
play  on  the  jewel  she  wore.  Save  their  good  nights,  none 
of  them  spoke  a  word. 

The  clog  barked,  the  white  cat  purred,  even  Roi  Dore 
woke  on  his  perch  to  crow  a  welcome ;  Viva  took  no 
notice  of  any  one  of  them.  Was  she  who  came  back 
dowered  with  elfin  gifts  to  heed  such  common  sounds  ? 

Moreover,  she  was  not  quite  at  ease  with  herself.  And 
one  must  be  very  much  at  one's  ease  to  enjoy  such  tender, 
homely,  innocent  things  as  these. 

Grand'mere  got  some  bread  and  some  honeycomb  and 
some  milk,  and  brought  them  to  her  in  silence  ;  but  Viva 
left  the  food  almost  untasted,  though  she  needed  it :  she 
knew  she  had  been  wrong.  They  went  up  stairs  in  the 
clear  moonlight,  needing  no  other  light,  and  the  child 
undressed  herself  slowly,  with  the  moonbeams  falling 
about  her  fair  round  limbs,  and  shining  shower  of  hair. 

The  Virelois,  still  in  silence,  opened  her  book  of  hours 
and  read — knowing  the  words  by  heart,  and  forgetting  to 
turn  over  the  pages. 

Suddenly  Viva  sprang  to  her,  and  threw  her  arms  about 
her. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         \\\ 

" Grand'mere,  I  was  wicked!    I  am  sorry!" 

The  old  woman's  firm  lips  quivered. 

"That  is  enough,"  she  said,  softly;  then  she  laid  her 
hands  on  the  girl's  shoulders,  and  held  them  there,  look- 
ing- straight  down  into  her  face  as  she  knelt. 

"  That  was  a  true  tale  you  told  us  this  day?" 

Viva's  eyes  met  hers  full  and  fearlessly. 

"Quite  true,  grand'mere." 

"It  is  strange!"  murmured  grand'mere:  then  she 
stooped  and  kissed  the  Waif's  flushed,  wondering,  eager 
face. 

"The  saints  take  thee  in  their  holy  keeping!  Go — say 
thy  prayers." 


CHAPTER   X. 


Viva,  two  days  later,  was  lying  wide  awake  in  her 
little  white  nest,  under  the"  caves,  while  still  the  first  tit- 
tering of  her  friends,  the  swallows  among  the  ivy,  was 
the  only  sound  of  the  coming  day,  and  Roi  Dore,  in  the 
shell  hard  by,  was  giving  his  first  challenge  to  the  yet 
unrisen  sun.  Her  heart  was  in  a  tumult  of  glad  excita- 
tion :  for  the  first  time  the  romance,  befitting  such  a  fairy 
princess  as  she,  had  touched  her  life:  for  the  first  time 
those  long-careless  elfin  ancestors  of  hers  had  bethought 
them  of  her,  and  had  sent  her  a  visitant  from  their  im- 
mortal home.  The  first  page  of  that  bright-sealed  book 
of  Fasrie,  which  she  called  her  Future,  had  been  opened 
to  her  gaze;  the  charmed  reading  of  the  mystic  volume 
had  commenced.  A  terrible  loss  had  come  to  her,  which 
wore  to  her  enchanted  eyes  the  brilliancy  of  an  immeas- 
urable gain:  her  childhood  had  gone  forever. 

Viva,  lying  awake  there  in  the  dullness  of  the  dawn, 
was  dreaming  of  the  wonderful  things  thai  had  glorified 
the  days  gone  by;  decidedly  those  fairy  progenitors  had 
remembered  her,  and  sent  her  a  Fairy  Prince  at  last] 

It  had  happened  in  this  wise : 

The  previous  morning  had  been  very  hot — hot  to  trop- 
ical fervor,  even  in  the  cool  old  convent  gardens,  with  their 


112  TRICOTRIN, 

deep  lush  grass,  their  silent  darkened  flower-filled  ways, 
their  noiseless  air  syringa-scented,  and  moved  by  the 
silent  wings  of  countless  birds. 

The  child  had  been  in  some  disgrace,  and  given  a  Latin 
canticle  to  learn  ;  and,  banished  into  solitude,  had  learned 
her  task  with  random  quickness,  knowing  nothing  of  its 
meaning,  and  then  resigned  herself  to  indolent  delight, 
lying  half  covered  with  the  thyme  and  plumes  of  spear- 
grass,  and  doing  nothing  in  sublime  content.  Hours  had 
drifted  over  her  uncounted,  when  the  boughs  above  her 
bent,  their  leafage  rustled,  and  close  beside  her  dropped 
— a  Fairy  Prince,  as  Viva  instantly  concluded, — a  youth 
of  two  and  twenty  years,  or  somewhat  more ;  dressed  in 
dark  velvet,  like  an  old  picture,  delicate,  gracious,  very 
fair  to  look  at,  and  with  a  voice  like  music.  He  had  let 
himself  fall  from  the  convent  wall — climbed  by  the  ivy's 
aid — and  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  Viva,  long  caressed 
by  the  voices  of  honest  affection,  heard  the  dangerous 
voice  of  adulation. 

The  innocent  but  supreme  vanity  of  the  child  made  her, 
though  startled,  amazed,  perplexed,  and  a  little  fright- 
ened, quickly  grasp  the  flattering  truth  that  it  was  her 

own  loveliness — seen  on  the  highway  road  he  told  her 

which  had  incited  him  to  this  adventurous  experiment; 
and  her  visitant  commanded  a  soft,  sweet  eloquence  that 
won  its  way  at  once  to  her  hearing.  She  did  not  com- 
prehend one-half  that  he  said,  nothing  that  he  implied; 
but  she  knew  the  one  fact:  that  he  thought  her  very 
beautiful — and  was  too  well  content  with  it  to  refuse  to 
hear  him  ring  the  changes  on  it. 

Nature  had  planted  in  her  an  innate  coquetry,  as  thor- 
oughly instinctive  as  a  bird's  flying,  and  the  instinct 
moved  her  now  without  her  knowing  it.  Flushed,  star- 
tled, infinitely  fair,  half  risen  from  her  bed  of  fragrant 
grasses,  she  gazed  at  her  young  adorer,  and  listened 
breathless  to  his  utterances;  but  the  coy,  proud,  arch, 
malicious,  feminine  nature  in  her,  taught  her  to  parry  his 
words,  and  play  with  his  worship,  in  an  impulse  to  defend 
herself  and  torment  him,  that  astonished  one  who  had 
thought  to  find  her  some  shy,  simple,  pretty  idiot  of  the 
peasantry. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         113 

"Viva — by  nature  wholly  free  from  shyness,  and  proud 
of  herself  from  her  conviction  of  her  lofty  birth — thought 
nothing  more  charming  than  such  an  interruption  of  the 
too  even  tenor  of  her  days;  all  the  more  charming  be- 
cause of  the  atrocious  crime  the  stranger's  presence 
formed  against  all  the  laws  of  her  detested  foes,  the  nuns. 
She  was  perfectly  aware  that  she  was  sinning  against  all 
their  rules  in  not  fleeing  instantly  from  this  intruder ;  but 
the  rebellion  was  just  what  she  enjoyed.  His  oratory 
was  most  silvery  sweet  on  her  ear,  for  it  told  her  only  of 
herself;  and,  half  willing,  half  reluctant,  she  listened. 

It  was  just  what  suited  that  old,  shadowy,  luscious- 
scented  garden,  and  such  an  enchanted  princess  as  her- 
self, to  be  thus  beset  under  the  mulberry  shadows  by  such 
a  wooer  ! 

Of  love,  in  men's  and  women's  meaning,  the  Fille  des 
Fees  had  no  conception;  this  was  only  worship,  she 
thought,  such  as  in  her  fairy  stories  the  captured  Prince 
always  gave  the  sovereign  Beauty.  The  youth  was  facile 
of  tongue ;  in  very  brief  space  he  had  filled  her  brain 
with  intoxicating  images  of  herself,  learned  all  she  had 
to  tell  of  her  short  history,  and  conjured  up  before  her 
magnificent  visions  of  the  world  from  which  she  was  shut 
out;  he  might  have  progressed  yet  further,  but  that  the 
voice  of  Scaur  Seraphine  calling  for  Viva  and  the  Latin 
canticle  interrupted  his  success.  Not  caring  to  be  caught 
in  that  rookery  of  women,  the  youno;  stranger  murmured 
his  hurried  and  tender  farewell,  swung  himself  lightly  by 
branch  and  ivy  coil  up  the  steep  wall,  and  disappeared, 
leaving  her  in  a  tumult  of  excitement,  which  sent  her 
with  scarlet  cheeks  and  dancing  eyes  to  the  call  of  Sceur 
Seraphine,  and  reduced  all  memory  of  the  canticle  to 
chaos. 

She  awoke  the  aexl  morning,  feverish  with  wonder  and 
expectation;  he  had  begged  hertomeel  him  at  the  beech- 
tree,  and  had  promised  to  tell  her  of  a  thousand  marvel- 
ous things.  She  had  told  grand'mere,  and  grand'mere 
had  not  been  as  pleased  as  she  had  anticipated;  grand'- 
mere had  not  taken  her  view  of  the  stranger ;  grand'mere 
had  scornfully  suggested  that  it  he  wore  a  fairy  prince  he 
would  not  be  under   the   necessity  of  climbing  earthly 

10* 


114  TRICOTRIN, 

walls;  grand'mere  had  finally  stated  that  it  must  have 
been  he  who  had  had  to  do  with  the  ring  up  at  Villiers,  and 
declared  that  she  thought  Tricotrin  would  not  like  her  to 
go  to  the  beech-tree.  Whereupon  Viva,  self-willed,  but 
frank  as  the  day,  had  declared  that  she  would  go,  that 
nothing  should  prevent,  and  had  been  fiery,  and  wayward, 
and,  as  she  well  knew,  naughty.  She  had  gone  to  bed 
with  naughtiness  in  her  soul,  and  awoke  with  it. 

When  she  threw  open  her  little  lattice,  close  under  its 
sill,  where  a  robin's  nest  had  been  made  in  the  spring, 
and  was  still  there  though  the  young  redbreasts  had  all 
flown,  there  gleamed  something  of  all  colors  with  a  shim- 
mer of  gold  and  of  silver.  It  lay  on  the  nest ;  trembling 
with  delight  she  drew  it  up  through  the  casement;  it  was 
a  collar  of  exquisite  workmanship  wreathed  with  forget- 
me-nots  in  turquoises  and  opals — ten  thousand  times 
more  beautiful  than  the  silver  wreath  of  that  odious 
Adelel 

With  the  self-same  action  as  poor  Gretchen's,  Viva, 
laughing,  and  almost  crying  with  joy,  clasped  the  lovely 
thing  round  her  own  white  throat,  and  gazed  enraptured 
at  her  own  reflection  in  her  tiny  glass,  and  rushed  down 
stairs  to  where  the  old  woman  was  busied  with  the  break- 
fast-coffee! 

"Grand'mere!  grand'mere!  Look!  Was  he  not  a 
fairy  prince  after  all?" 

Grand'mere  looked,  and,  to  Viva's  amazement,  seemed 
troubled;  even  while  woman-like  she  marveled  at  the 
beauty  of  the  toy. 

"The  only  fairy  prince  the  world  holds — a  rich  man," 
she  muttered.  "  Your  throat  is  more  graceful  without  it, 
my  little  one!" 

"Grand'mere!"  cried  Viva,  in  supreme  scorn,  "that  is 
because  I  am  dressed  like  a  child — like  a  peasant !  If 
you  saw  me  with  silks  and  laces  and  all  that  one  ought 
to  have!" 

"Ought  to  have!"  murmured  the  old  woman  as  she 
set  down  the  brown  rolls  and  the  steaming  milk,  ",  There 
is  no  one  from  whom  you  could  claim  even  these  as  your 
right,  Viva." 

Viva  did  not  hear  the  rebuke;  she  was  standing  in 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         115 

ecstasy  before  a  great  burnished  copper  caldron  that 
served  as  a  mirror,  watching  the  sunshine  play  on  her 
necklace.  Grand'mere  was  very  silent  during  the  break- 
fast, though  her  cheerful  loquacious  tongue  was  generally 
never  still  over  her  coffee.  Viva  was  silent,  too,  angered 
that  her  splendid  possession  had  not  met  with  more 
enthusiasm.  Already  the  jewels  on  her  throat  had  cast 
a  shadow  on  her  young  soul ;  they  were  so  costly  and  so 
brilliant  that  all  the  dear  familiar  things  of  her  home — 
even  grancl'mere's  brown  face  in  its  frame  of  white  linen 
— looked  common  and  unwelcome. 

"  You  will  go  to  the  beech-tree  ?"  asked  the  old 
woman. 

The  child  tossed  her  spirited  head. 

"  Of  course  1  I  said  so  I" 

But  when  Viva  came  in  the  late  afternoon  to  her  tryst, 
under  the  beech  boughs,  knitting  her  scarlet  worsted,  sat 
grand'mere. 

Viva  could  have  cried,  and  her  prince,  when  he  came 
also,  could  have  cursed,  with  vexation.  But  he  was  not 
so  frank  as  the  Waif;  he  showed  no  displeasure;  on  the 
contrary  he  talked  so  softly  and  charmingly,  showed  so 
graceful  a  respect  toward  the  old  age  of  the  Virelois,  and 
evinced  such  interest  in  all  he  had  heard  of  Tricotrin, 
that  even  grand'mere's  prejudices  began  to  dissolve. 

"She  is  so  lovely;  she  is  tit  to  be  a  princess  in  earnest, 
the  little  angel!"  thought  the  latter.  "  The  young  man 
speaks  well — he  has  a  fair  face — who  knows  ? " 

And  her  thoughts  drifted  on  building  castles  almost  as 
aerial  and  baseless  as  Viva's. 

He,  when  he  left  them  and  sauntered  away  to  where 
his  servants  and  horses  waited  in  the  shadow,  mused  to 
himself: 

"The  old  fool  will  give  me  more  trouble  than  the 
young  one.  But  the  child  is  so  handsome — I  never  met 
with  her  rival — she  will  be  worth  some  patience  and 
some  strategy !" 

For  the  boy.  with  his  delicate  face  and  his  tender  voice, 
was  at  heart  the  coldest  of  sensualists  ;  and  youth  is  not 
seldom  the  most  cruel  of  egotists. 


116  TRICOTRIN, 

"Is  he  not  a  prince  now,  grand'mere?"  laughed  Viva, 
in  triumph.     The  old  woman  mused. 

"He  is  well  spoken,"  she  cried,  cautiously.  "But  I 
misdoubt  if  Tricotrin  will  wish  you  to  keep  that  pretty 
toy ;  and, — do  you  like  this  one  as  well  as  that  great  lord 
of  Villiers  that  you  told  me  about?" 

"Oh,  no!"  cried  Yiva,  fervently,  careless  of  how  her 
confession  hurt  her  present  hero.  "He  looked  like  a  king, 
a  Charlemagne,  or  a  David,  or  an  Arthur,  you  know. 
This  one  is  only  like  a  Prince  Faineant!" 

And  she  laughed  mischievously  at  her  own  merry  con- 
ceit. She  was  delighted  that  "this  one  "  should  worship 
her,  but  she  had  no  inclination  to  worship  him. 

"It  is  dangerous,"  thought  the  old  woman,  anxiously. 
"Ah,  if  Tricotrin  were  only  a  man  in  a  house,  like  a  Chris- 
tian, instead  of  always  wandering,  wandering,  wandering, 
like  a  gipsy,  one  could  let  him  know,  and  he  would  come. 
M.  le  Cure  would  write  for  me.  But  he  is  like  the  wind, 
going  all  over  the  earth,  no  one  knows  why  or  whither. 
Well!  the  good  saints  have  her  in  her  keeping; — though 
to  be  sure  one  does  not  know  whether  she  was  ever  bap- 
tized, which  may  make  them  indifferent.  But  I  do  not 
think  they  would  forsake  an  innocent  child  for  that;  and 
— Tricotrin  is  a  sorcerer,  he  will  come  if  any  real  peril 
touches  her." 

So  she  comforted  herself  with  the  remembrance  of  the 
occult  powers  of  Viva's  guardian,  and  did  not  try  to  dis- 
cover who  the  young  man  was,  lest  she  should  find  him 
of  a  rank  that  would  dazzle  with  still  more  fatal  effect 
the  eminence-seeking  eyes  of  the  ambitious  Waif. 

To  the  best  of  her  power  the  good  old  creature  tried  to 
screen  the  child  from  the  sight  or  approach  of  this  dan- 
gerous stranger.  But  the  resources  that  riches  command, 
and  the  subtilty  of  such  love  as  the  young  voluptuary 
had  conceived  for  the  "Light  of  the  Loire,"  were  more 
than  a  match  for  the  Virelois'  honest  and  simple  en- 
deavors. 

He  made  no  more  trysts  since  Viva  so  innocently  re- 
vealed them,  but  over  and  over  again  he  waylaid  her, 
in  the  woods,  on  the  high-road,  at  the  ferry,  or  in  the 
convent  garden  when  she  was  condemned  to  solitude  for 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         Uf 

inattention  or  insolence ;  and  such  faults  were  now  more 
common  than  ever.  Viva  was  of  necessity  often  alone; 
and  he  had  many  opportunities  to  gain  her  ear.  He  filled 
it  with  many  hyperboles  about  her  own  loveliness,  with 
many  asseverations  of  his  own  homage  to  it,  and  with 
what  was  yet  more  alluring  to  her,  many  pictures  of  the 
"  world"  for  which  she  longed.  Cities  of  Italy  all  glow- 
ing with  flowers  and  wild  with  festivals  ;  masked  balls  all 
a-glitter  with  rich  hues  and  shining  jewels  ;  summer-fetes 
with  the  toy-boats  drifting  on  summer-lakes  to  palace-steps 
hidden  in  myrtle  and  oranges;  Paris  itself  in  its  nights  of 
rejoicing,  with  the  churches  all  domes  of  sparkling  fire, 
and  each  street  a  stream  of  laughing  life — all  these  he 
painted  to  Viva,  and,  relying  on  the  child's  absolute  ig- 
norance, promised  her  deathless  roses,  royal  power,  every 
manner  of  glory  and  delight,  if  she  would  go  thither  with 
him.  But  Viva  resisted  this  :  she  would  have  dearly 
liked  it  she  told  him  for  sake  of  all  those  wonderful  things 
which  he  promised  her.  But  then — Tricotrin,  grand'mere, 
Roi  Dore,  Bebee,  all  that  there  were  to  leave  1 

He  could  not  make  her  reconciled  to  flight  from  them 
all;  and  he  soon  found  that  in  her  love  for  Tricotrin, 
whom  he  held  in  light  scorn  never  having  seen,  as  some 
vagabond  scoundrel — lay  the  stoutest  foe  he  had  to  en- 
counter. AVithout  this  he  might  easily  have  lured 
her  to  her  own  ruin  by  those  chief  agents  of  her  sex's 
destruction,  vanity  and  the  desire  of  wealth.  It  was  in 
her  love  for  her  protector  that  lay  the  only  shield  she  had, 
unconscious  as  she  was  of  her  own  danger.  It  was  in 
vain  that  her  wooer  promised  to  acquaint  Tricotrin  of  her 
presence  in  Paris  if  she  once  would  but  go  there;  Viva 
would  shake  her  heard  and  ask  him  mournfully  how  could 
he  do  that  when  no  one  knew  where  Tricotrin  lived?  It 
was  no  less  in  vain  that  he  strove  to  persuade  her  that 
Tricotrin  could  not  be  angered,  but  would  rather  be  pleased 
that  she  should  have  any  pleasure.  Her  heart  was  too 
loyal  to  her  only  friend  to  let  her  be  induced  to  go  from 
the  home  that  he  gave  her.  unknown  to  him.  Moreover, 
Viva  wras  rather  deterred  by  her  consciousness  that 
grand'mere  did  not  approve  of  the  stranger,  or  of  his 
jeweled  to}rs,  or  of  any   part  of  the  business ;  and  the 


118  TRIGOTRIN, 

disapproval  of  the  good  indulgent  old  woman  was  so  rare 
on  any  project  of  the  child's  whom  she  loved  so  well  that 
it  had  a  weight  with  Viva  that  none  of  the  sermons  of 
those  Sisters,  who  were  always  scolding  her,  would  have 
possessed.  Her  young  suitor  was  irritated  at  the  slow 
progress  he  made,  he  was  used  to  conquer  quickly,  and 
the  unforeseen  difficulty  he  had  here  piqued  his  pride  and 
his  self-admiration. 

"  We  must  come  to  a  climax,"  he  thought  one  evening 
as  he  sauntered  to  meet  her.  "  It  is  no  use  playing  the 
Faust  any  longer  for  nothing;  and  if  ever  there  were  a 
Gretchen  whom  jewels  will  tempt  and  console  it  is  this 
little  vain  ignoramus!" 

As  he  mused  he  came  near  her;  standing  beside  a 
water-spring  with  the  jug  she  had  come  to  fill  hanging 
empty  in  her  hand,  while  she  dreamed  of— not  himself, 
though  he  flattered  himself  that  she  did  so— but  of  her 
own  perfections  as  he  had  mirrored  them  to  her. 

They  were  young ;  but  both  their  loves  were  as  ego- 
tistic and  as  insincere  as  though  they  were  two  subtle 
courtiers  playing  at  sentiment  for  the  sake  of  intrigue.  It 
is  not  always  in  youth  that  the  loves  are  the  strongest  and 
purest.  The  insincerity  and  the  egotism  were  unconscious 
in  her,  in  him  they  were  part  of  his  system  ;  but  with  both 
they  were  there. 

"Viva!"  he  whispered  as  he  stole  behind  her.  "  That 
is  too  much  Cinderella's  work  for  my  Princess!" 

The  poor  little  princess  colored  angrily:  she  was  only 
too  quick  herself  to  disdain  useful  errands. 

"  Grand'mere  is  old,  and  the  water  is  far  to  fetch,"  she 
said,  hurriedly,  apologizing  for  doing  what  duty,  and 
affection,  and  veneration  for  age  alike  demanded.  So  soon 
had  the  poison  he  had  sown  borne  fruit. 

"You  can  do  these  things  and  look  a  princess  still!" 
he  murmured.  "Still,  I  would  see  you  where  slaves 
should  obey  your  slightest  word." 

"  Yes  !"  sighed  Viva. 

He  always  spoke  in  hyperbole  to  her,  and  the  child's 
imagination  was  intoxicated  by  it. 

"Well !  Come, then!  I  must  leave  your  province  with 
to-morrow." 


TEE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         119 

"Leave  it!" 

She  turned  a  little  pale,  and  looked  up  startled :  she 
was  not  prepared  to  lose  this  generous  eloquent  visitant, 
who  had  come  to  break,  with  the  charm  of  so  much  mys- 
tery, the  too  tranquil  tenor  of  her  days. 

"  Leave  it  ?  Yes.  Will  you  regret  me  ?" 

"  Oh  indeed  !  I  should  miss  you  so  much  !" 

Her  face  grew  very  sad  and  earnest.  She  felt  her  lips 
quiver  a  little.  She  did  not  like  to  think  her  fairy-story 
was  going  thus  soon  to  be  broken  off  without  any  more 
wonder-flowers  blooming  for  her. 

"  Then  you  love  me,  my  fairest?" 

"  I  try  to  do  so,  monsieur,"  said  Yiva,  softly. 

It  was  the  truth  ;  she  did  try.  She  thought  he  deserved 
her  love,  he  was  so  good  to  her  ;  but,  in  real  fact,  she  did 
not  give  him  quite  so  much  genuine  fondness  as  she  gave 
Roi  Dore.  He  bit  his  lip  with  irritation ;  he  knew  the 
total  absence  of  love  that  spoke  in  the  answer.  Still,  the 
chagrin  and  the  mortification  only  made  him  more  resolute 
in  pursuit. 

"All  I  dare^hope  is  to  make  you  love  me  one  day  !"  he 
murmured  caressingly.  "  To  be  loved  as  I  love  were  too 
much  to  desire ;  but,  if  you  would  but  trust  yourself  to 
me  it  should  go  hard  but  I  would  win  your  heart.  Come  1 
Come  to  that  world  I  have  so  often  painted  to  you.  Come 
— to  be  its  idol,  its  empress,  its  treasure  I" 

"I  should  dearly  love  it!"  sighed  Yiva,  wistfully; 
"but " 

"  There  is  no  '  but,'  "  murmured  her  tempter.  "How 
lost  you  are  here  !  A  ferryman,  a  swineherd,  a  postillion 
by  hazard,  the  only  creatures  that  see  what  a  king  must 
adore]  If  this  man  whom  you  speak  of  cared  really  for 
you,  would  he  beep  you  in  poverty  and  obscurity  thus? 
Come  with  me,  my  fairest.  You  shall  be  queen  of  Paris, 
I  swear  to  you  !" 

The  child  sighed  again.  Her  cheeks  were  burning,  her 
eyes  glittering,  her  whole  soul  intoxicated.  Was  he  a 
prince  of  France?  she  thought.  Why  not  ?  And  then 
to  refuse  him  when  he  was  willing  to  take  her  to  share 
all  his  glories  ! 

His  arm  stole  round  her,  lightly  brushing  the  hanging 
profusion  of  her  fair  curls. 


120  TRICOTRIN, 

"  Come!  come  !  to  have  France  for  your  sovereignty, 
and  all  men  who  look  once  in  your  beautiful  eyes  for  your 
slaves  !" 

Yiva  glanced  up,  half  vaguely  terrified,  but  still  in  a 
trance  of  incredulous  and  dream-like  rapture.  With  the 
next  moment  she  might  have  said  yes, — she  might  have 
rushed  to  her  own  ruin,  blind  with  the  longing  for 
change  and  for  power, — she  might  have  fallen  headlong 
into  the  abyss  opened  beneath  her  ; — but  one  word  was 
her  savior. 

That  word  was  ; — "Viva !" 

Under  the  trees  stood  Tricotrin. 

With  a  bound  like  a  deer's  she  sprang  to  him.  Her 
young  lover  stood,  sorely  discomfited,  gazing  in  blank 
amazement,  in  bitter  annoyance,  at  this  man  of  whom  he 
had  heard  so  much,  and  whom  he  had  never  seen ;  who 
came  so  unwelcomely,  in  so  untimely  a  moment,  between 
him  and  his  prey.  Tricotrin's  bright  eyes  swept  over 
him,  and  a  great  wrath  gleamed  in  them ;  but  he  stro'ked 
the  girl's  hair  caressingly. 

"  Who  is  your  friend,  Yiva?" 

"  A  stranger  ;  a  prince,  I  think !"  she  whispered  eagerly. 
"  And  he  has  given  me  beautiful  toys,  all  covered  with 
jewels,  lovelier  than  the  gold  things  they  have  on  the 
altar  ;  and  he  says  if  I  will  go  with  him  he  will  show  me 
Paris  en  fete,  and  give  me  roses  that  will  never  die,  and 
diamonds,  and  riches,  and  the  life  of  an  empress !  May  I 
go  ?  and  will  you  go  too  ?  and  we  can  make  grand'mere 
so  happy  1  And  he  says  that  kings'  daughters  will  not 
be  noticed  when  I  pass  through  the  streets  I" 

The  breathless  words,  poured  out  in  all  their  childish 
mingling  of  selfishness  and  generosity,  of  innocence  and 
vanity  ; — Tricotrin  listened,  then  laid  his  hand  gently  on 
her  shoulder  : 

"Go  to  grand'mere,  Viva.  I  will  talk  with  this  good 
friend  of  yours,  and  hear  a  little  of  all  "these  wonderful 
things  to  which  he  invites  us.  Do  as  I  tell  you,  my  child. 
You  shall  not  lose  the  deathless  roses  by  obedien.ce." 

Yiva  looked  at  them  alternately  a  little  wistfully ;  she 
was  loth  to  go. 

"  He  has  been  so  kind  !"  she  murmured  softly;  "  and  I 
should  like  to  go,  if  I  may  !" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  121 

Then  she  obeyed,  and  passed  from  them  toward  the 
cottage,  her  head  turning  still  wistfully  hack  to  them,  with 
the  empty  jug  still  hanging  in  her  hand,  her  errand  to  the 
water-spout  forgotten. 

Tricotrin  stood  in  silence,  waiting  till  she  should  be  be- 
yond hearing.  The  youth  stood  his  ground,  too  proud 
to  turn  away,  but  livid  with  chagrin,  rage,  and  mortifica- 
tion ;  marveling  also  at  the  aspect  of  the  man  who  had 
come  thus  between  him  and  his  soul's  desire.  He  had 
thought  with  light  contempt  of  the  wanderer,  whom  the 
old  peasant  deified  and  the  child  adored,  as  of  some  poverty- 
stricken,  folly-steeped  vagabond ;  some  strolling  musician, 
since  they  spoke  of  his  art;  some  half-outlawed  eccentric, 
whom  he  could  quiet  with  coin.  He  was  bewildered  at 
the  royal  and  splendid  beauty,  the  careless,  fearless  bear- 
ing, the  magnificent  manhood  of  this  bohemian  who  stood 
before  him  in  the  linen  blouse  of  the  people,  and  with  a 
little  black  monkey  peering,  witch-like,  from  over  his 
shoulder. 

Viva  once  out  of  sight,  Tricotrin  swung  round,  his  eyes 
like  blue  lightning  in  their  wrath. 

"  So,  Lord  Chanrillon  !  this  is  the  thief's  work  in  which 
you  spend  your  villegiatura !" 

The  young  man  looked  at  him  in  silence,  startled  into 
speechless  amazement  at  the  sound  of  the  name  that  he 
bore,  a  name  he  had  carefully  concealed  through  the 
whole  of  the  siege  he  had  laid  to  Viva.  He  recovered 
himself  with  an  effort. 

"Since  you  know  my  title, "he  said,  with  chill  languor, 
"you  know  also  the  respect  due  to  it.  Know  still  further 
that  I  have  no  wish  to  parley  with  you  on  any  subject." 

"That  I  will  warrant  you  have  not  1  But  your  wishes 
are  not  what  I  shall  consult.  Do  you  know  that  I  could 
kill  you  where  you  stand  just  as  easily  as  I  could  break 
that  slender  sapling  asunder;  and, — by  God! — I  have  a 
mind  to  do  it,  too,  you  beardless  libertine,  you  smiling 
sensualist!" 

His  height  towered  above  the  young  man's  slight  stat- 
ure ;  his  voice  rolled  out  in  sonorous  passion  ;  his  chest 
heaved  with  his  quickened  breathing.  A  momentary 
horror  seized  his  hearer,  who  shrank  back  with  an  invol- 

11 


122  TRICOTRIN, 

untary  impulse,  while  his  clear,  brown  cheek  turned  white 
like  a  fainting  woman's.  Who  could  tell,  he  thought, 
what  the  vengeance  of  this  lawless  republican  might  be  ? 

Tricotrin  saw  the  fear  of  him,  and  laughed  bitterly  in 
his  wrath. 

"Pshaw,  child!  Men  do  not  kill  such  things  as  you, 
though  it  is  dangerous  to  spare  adders  because  they  look 
so  small ;  a  wound  unto  death  is  one's  common  reward 
for  the  misplaced  compassion  1  Well,  what  plea  do  you 
raise  in  defense  of  your  villainy?" 

The  youth  laughed  coldly  and  scornfully. 

"  I  am  not  accustomed  to  raise  pleas  for  my  actions ; 
still  less  should  I  do  so  to  an  inferior.  If  I  needed  one, 
however,  the  easiest  would  be  found  in  the  overtures  that 
were  made  to  me  by  your " 

The  lie  faltered  and  died  unfinished  on  his  tongue.  He 
knew  that  as  little  might  a  lion  be  enraged  with  impu- 
nity as  this  man  be  goaded  with  safety.  He  replaced  his 
falsehood  with  a  scoff. 

"Pardon  me!  I  can  understand  your  annoyance.  The 
annoyance  of  losing  the  one  ewe  lamb !  But,  if  I  re- 
member the  Bible  story  aright,  the  ewe  lamb  went  with 
much  eagerness  to  the  sacrifice.  Your  Viva  does  not 
differ  from  Bathsheba!  Besides,  I  mean  very  well  by 
her.     The  charming  little  fool  is  wholly  lost  here." 

Tricotrin's  hands  fell  on  his  shoulders,  and  shook  him 
to  and  fro,  as  the  jaws  of  a  lion  can  shake  what  they 
seize  but  forbear  to  destroy. 

"Another  word  like  these  and  I  will  fling  you  out  into 
that  water,  to  sink  or  swim  as  .you  may!" 

The  youth  freed  himself  from  the  grasp  with  difficulty, 
growing  pale  with  rage  and  fear. 

"It  would  do  you  too  much  honor  to  resent  your  out- 
rage myself,"  he  said  insolently,  "  I  will  send  my  grooms 
to  the  task." 

Tricotrin,  even  in  the  tempest  of  his  wrath,  laughed 
at  the  threat  with  his  old  ironic  amusement. 

"  You  will  ?  Indeed  !  It  will  be  a  mistake — for  your 
grooms  !  For  the  rest,  my  lord,  as  you  term  your- 
self  " 

"I  decline  any  more  speech  with  you!" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         123 

"Pshaw!  You  will  listen  as  long  as  I  choose,"  an- 
swered Tricotrin,  with  contemptuous  command.  "  Honor 
you  have  none ;  good  faith  you  have  none ;  but  your  father 
has  both.  If  you  do  not  swear  that  from  this  hour  Viva 
is  free  from  your  vile  temptations,  and  keep  your  oath  to 
the  letter,  Estmere  shall  learn  what  the  heir  to  his  name 
can  become  !" 

The  young  man  broke  in  on  the  words  with  a  laugh  of 
insolent  ridicule. 

"  The  earl  will  not  aid  you  much  1  He  and  I  are  very 
distant  acquaintances.  Besides,  Estmere  has  quite  youth 
enough  in  him  to  be  no  saint  himself." 

A  darker  storm  swept  over  Tricotrin's  face. 

"  Europe  reveres  your  father ;  cannot  you  do  so 
much?"  he  said  sternly.  "That  you  please  him  ill,  I 
doubt  not.  Eustace  Estmere  is  a  gentleman,  a  just  man, 
an  upright  man,  a  man  of  noble  temper  and  pure  honor. 
You  must  degrade  him  bitterly — you  ! — the  son  of  such 
a  mother!" 

The  young  man's  feature's  flushed  duskily  with  a  flush 
of  shame,  even  while  absolute  amaze  possessed  and  held 
him  silent. 

Tricotrin's  eyes  softened  a  little  as  he  saw  that  red- 
dened, painful  shadow  on  the  insolent  young  face  before 
him. 

"  I  would  not  have  taunted  you  by  your  mother's  dis- 
honor if  you  had  not  sought  to  lure  a  creature,  innocent 
as  the  very  doves,  into  dishonored  life,"  he  said  gravely. 
"  But, — you  make  me  doubt,  you  make  me  disbelieve  that 
you  can  come  of  Estniere's  race." 

"Estmere!"  echoed  his  hearer,  in  bitter  impatience  of 
his  father's  name;  "Estmere  !  You  prate  of  Estmere  ! 
What  can  1m  be  to  you  ?" 

"What  he  is  to  all  the  world, — what  his  son  will  never 
be — a  gentleman  !  lie  bears  you  no  love,  my  young  sir. 
You  outrage,  offend,  incense  him  at  every  turn  and  every 
phase  of  your  worthless  life.  What  mercy  do  you  think 
lie  will  show  you  if  I  tell  him  of  some  of  your  pastimes, 
of  some  of  your  vices  ?  of  your  fashion  of  spending  the 
last  night  of  April,  in  Paris,  this  very  year?" 

The  youth  started  and  grew  deadly  pale. 


124  TRICOTRIN, 

"  Good  God !    What  are  you  ?"  he  muttered.     "  Devil, 
or  sorcerer,  that  you  know  these  things?" 

"  One  needs  to  be  neither  to  know  how  you  steep  your- 
self in  the  foulness  of  orgies  that  many  a  debauchee 
would  recoil  from  in  disgust  1"  answered  Tricotrin  with 
the  sonorous  force  of  his  voice  ringing  loud  in  disdain. 
"  Pshaw,  boy !  Do  you  think  I  cannot  tell  the  truth  of 
even  such  pitiful  things  as  your  valueless  years  ?  I  know 
the  shame  of  your  vices — of  your  crimes — my  young 
Commodus.  Your  father  does  not :  well  for  you  that 
that  eagle  soars  far  too  high  to  see  where  you  riot  with 
the  carrion  birds  !  Your  mother  lay  in  his  bosom  to  rend 
his  great  heart  with  her  treacherous  talons ;  you,  fit  son 
of  the  traitress,  claim  his  race  and  his  name  to  sully  them 
both  and  drag  both  through  the  mud  of  the  foulest  of 
license  1  He  cannot  tear  his  name  from  you  ;  he  cannot 
rescue  his  race  from  your  mother's  pollution  of  it ;  he 
cannot  prevent  your  present  rank  or  your  future  succes- 
sion. But  you  know  what,  he  is, — you  know  how  he  can 
judge  and  how  he  can  punish, — now, — shall  he  hear  the 
whole  vile  truth  of  his  heir's  brutal  orgies  ?  Or  will  you 
purchase  my  silence  by  leaving  in  peace  what  I  cherish?" 

Yiva's  lover  stood  irresolute,  pale,  tremulous  with  rage, 
with  wonder,  with  baffled  hatred,  with  ignominious  sub- 
mission. Above  all  the  contesting  emotions  which  shat- 
tered his  insolence  and  broke  asunder  his  self-control, 
was  one  supreme  all-absorbing  amaze  at  this  man  who 
arraigned  him  with  the  authority  of  a  king,  with  the  dis- 
dain of  a  superior,  with  the  omniscience  of  a  god  1 

Even  in  that  moment  of  humiliation  and  powerless 
passion,  a  curious  dreamy  speculation  came  on  him,  and 
made  him  wonder  how,  if  such  men  as  these  were  the 
people,  it  arrived  that  the  people  did  not  govern  and 
rule  ? 

" Choose  1"  said  Tricotrin  simply.  "Do  I  know  too 
much  of  you  for  you  to  oppose  my  will  any  longer  ?  Or 
must  I  take  sharper  means  to  protect  what  is  innocent 
from  your  toils  ?" 

He  did  not  answer  :  he  was  irresolute.  A  galled  pride, 
a  vacillating  fury,  combated  with  him  the  impulse  of  pru- 
dence and  fear.     He  loathed  to  bend  and  surrender ;  yet 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WATF  AND  STRAY.         125 

he  dared  not  provoke  vengeance  from  one  who  knew  h^ 
worst  secrets. 

"  Choose  1"  said  Tricotrin  with  fiery  impatience.  "No 
matter  to  me  the  choice  that  you  make  !  Do  you  renounce 
your  pursuit? — or  do  I  go  to  Estmere?" 

"  Were  either  Estmere  or  you  such  anchorites  in  your 
youth?" 

The  mortified  pride,  the  ignoble  fear  of  the  young  man's 
heart  took  refuge  in  a  feeble  taunt  and  evasion. 

Tricotrin  smiled  contemptuously. 

"Neither  of  us.  Think  you  that  I  blame  a  boy's  ar- 
dent follies  ? — a  young  man's  lawless  loves  ?  Think  you 
I  do  not  know  how  sweet  women's  lips  are  in  our  youth, 
and  how  hard  to  resist  the  soft  glance  of  their  eyes  ?  I 
make  excuse  for  the  swift  unthinking  sins  of  young  years; 
I  can  pardon  error  where  warm  passion  blinds  conscience 
and  tempts  all  the  senses.  But  that  is  not  your  crime. 
You, — cool,  cold,  and  wary;  not  loving,  only  desiring; 
not  seeking  a  heart  to  beat  echo  to  yours ;  but  only  seek- 
ing new  prey  to  first  seize,  then  throw  away; — you, — 
weave  lie  on  lie  to  trap  a  child  in  her  ignorance,  you — 
with  all  a  boy's  cruelty  have  all  the  graybeard's  slow 
science,  you — are  a  traitor,  a  thief,  and  a  liar !" 

The  young  man,  stung  beyond  endurance,  sprang  on 
him  to  strike  a  blow  for  each  word ;  Tricotrin  caught  his 
arm  and  held  it  there,  the  arm  uplifted,  the  blow  unstruck. 

"  I  like  you  better  for  that,"  he  said  briefly.  "There  is 
some  touch  of  the  old  race  in  you,  though  very  little. 
But  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to  resent  what  is  true.  It 
were  better  to  admit  it  with  apology  and  remorse.  Now 
— make  your  choice.  Leave  France  for  a  year  on  any 
pretext  you  will; — or  stay  and  see  what  your  father  says 
of  the  things  I  can  tell  him.  It  is  no  matter  to  me  which 
you  select.     Either  course  will  equally  serve  me." 

With  thai  he  loosened  his  hold  on  the  boy's  arm,  and 
turned  from  him,  Leaving  his  foe  to  an  impotent  and  fever- 
ish rage — the  rage  of  a  proud,  self-engrossed,  pampered, 
imperious  nature  against  the  only  creature  who  had  ever 
crossed  its  purpose  or  arraigned  its  actions. 

Calmly  as  he  had  spoken  to  his  antagonist  there  was 
no  calmness  on  his  face  as  he  walked  on  alone  ;  walked 

11* 


120  TRICOTRIN, 

on,  away  from  the  river,  and  toward  Viva's  home.  Tem- 
pestuous pain,  and  anger,  and  many  mingling  unana- 
lyzed  emotions,  had  been  awakened  in  him.  Wrath  was 
rare  with  him,  and  when  it  awoke  was  as  the  wrath  of 
the  lions;  moreover,  many  things  of  bitterness,  many 
memories  long  buried,  stirred  in  him  under  the  sudden- 
ness of  this  peril  to  the  one  he  had  chosen  to  defend.  He 
had  needed  to  ask  no  questions ;  he  had  told  what  the 
young  man's  object  was,  and  what  her  danger,  the  first 
moment  that  his  eyes  had  lit  on  them  together  under  the 
trees  about  the  water  freshet.  And  it  had  filled  him  with 
an  almost  ungovernable  passion.  The  insult,  the  jeop- 
ardy, for  her,  would  have  been  from  any  one  outrage 
enough  to  make  his  blood  in  flame;  but  from  the  son  of 
Estmere,  they  took  a  darker  color,  they  dealt  a  deeper 
blow. 

"Must  they  have  even  her?"  he  said  in  his  soul. 

At  any  time  it  would  have  been  painful  to  him  to  know 
that  the  risk  of  womanhood  so  nearly  approached  the 
child  who  to  him  was  but  such  a  child  still;  that  the  cor- 
ruption of  worldly  wishes  and  worldly  temptations  had 
so  soon  found  her  out  in  her  solitude  to  assail  her  ;  that 
the  insidious  graces  of  youth  and  of  love  had  crept  in  to 
assault  and  to  taint  the  young  heart,  whose  transparency 
and  whose  pureness  from  all  evil  knowledge  had  been 
his  delight.  He  had  saved  her  from  death,  and  sustained 
life  in  her  through  all  the  years  of  her  sunny  existence, 
which,  through  him,  had  never  been  darkened  by  a  single 
cloud; — and  his  reward  was,  that  the  first  beardless 
stranger  who  took  the  trouble  could  lead  her  away  with 
a  few  honeyed  words  I 

The  desertion  struck  a  heavier  pang  into  Tricotrin's 
heart  than  he,  the  laughing  philosopher,  cared  that  any- 
thing should  do.  He  would  have  given  up  much  for 
Viva — nay,  had  given  up  much  many  a  time  to  be  able 
to  send  gold  enough  to  maintain  her  in  ease  and  in  some 
sort  of  grace, — and  shel  She  was  willing  to  go  away 
from  him  to  the  first  handsome  heartless  youth  that  en- 
treated her! 

There  was  a  tinge  of  jealous  pain  in  him,  which  made 
the  caprice  and  the  ingratitude  in  her  strike  him  doubly 
sharply. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         127 

But  as  he  had  done  when  in  wrath  with  the  Greek 
Canaris,  so  he  did  now, — he  strove  against  and  shook  off 
the  alien  regret.  He  lifted  his  head  and  looked  at  the 
sunset  which  was  burning,  rich  and  red,  low  down  in  the 
west. 

"  So  I  and  his  son  have  crossed!"  he  murmured.  "Ah  ! 
That  is  droll,  Mistigri.  What  is  not  droll  in  this  world  ? 
Tragi-comedy  everywhere.  How  we  waste  our  time  in 
wrath  ! — and  neglect  all  that  might  raise  our  souls.  How 
many  men  will  look  at  that  to-night?  Not  one  in  a  mil- 
lion ;  the  sun  sets  every  day, — who  cares  ?  God  has  cast 
beauty  broadcast  all  over  the  earth,  the  gentlest  teacher 
we  can  have; — and  who  thinks  to  thank  God  for  it?" 

He  stood  awhile  looking  with  eagle  eyes  at  the  glori- 
ous spectacle;  —  the  broad  field  of  glowing  light,  the 
clouds  sun-flushed  to  scarlet,  the  blue  sky  deepening  into 
purple,  the  shafts  of  the  dying  rays  slanting  upward  like 
golden  spears: — stood  till  all  the  radiance  sank  away  into 
the  deep  peace  of  the  early  night. 

Then  having  thus  exorcised  his  darker  spirit,  he  moved 
away  with  his  head  bowed  like  one  who  turns  from  that 
which  is  holier  and  greater  than  himself,  and  from  which 
he  has  sought  both  counsel  and  consolation. 


CHAPTER   XL 


He  went  back  to  Viva. 

At  the  door  of  her  home  she  met  him,  lifting  her  face 
full  of  eagerness. 

"  Ma}r  I  go  with  him  ?  Do  you  like  him  ?  Did  he  tell 
you  all  lie  told  me?" 

Tricotrin  looked  a  moment  away  from  her. 

"You  wish  so  much  to  go  with  this  wonderful  new 
friend,  then?" 

Viva  gave  a  longing  sigh. 

"Oh,  yes!     To  see  Paris  illuminated I" 

"Ah,  capricious  and  true  to  your  sex!     Change — that 


128  TRICOTRIN, 

is  all  you  want!"  he  murmured  impatiently.  "So!  It 
is  for  the  sake  of  Paris  illuminated,  is  it?  Would  you 
go  with  him  to  a  desert?  To  a  dreary  sun-burnt  place  ? — 
to  the  sand-plains  about  Marseilles  for  example  ?" 

Viva  opened  wide  her  large  eyes  in  horror  and  sheer 
perplexity. 

"Oh,  monDieu!     No!" 

Tricotrin  smiled ;  his  worst  dread  was  dissipated,  he 
saw  that  love  had  not  even  left  its  first  breath  here,  that 
what  had  beguiled  her  was  the  city  in  its  festival  season. 

"Listen,  Viva,"  he  said  gently,  "you  love  me  well 
enough  to  believe  what  I  tell  you  and  to  be  content  with 
it  without  asking  its  reason  ?" 

Viva  looked  up  a  little  stilled  and  startled. 

"Oh  yes!" 

"And  to  be  sure  that  my  pleasure  is  in  your  joy,  and 
that  if  I  deny  you  aught,  it  is  because  I  know  that  thing 
would  be  hurtful  ?" 

Viva's  eyes  grew  graver  and  less  luminous. 

"  Of  course !     You  are  so  good  to  me  !" 

"  Then,  Viva,  it  will  pleasure  me  best  that  you  should 
not  talk  more  with  this  friend,  and  that  you  should  not 
see  Paris  till  you  can  go  with  me.  It  would  not  be  well, 
and  this  young  man  would  not  be  a  wise  and  fitting  guide 
for  you  there.  JSTow,  if  you  love  me  as  I  imagine,  you 
will  be  content  that  because  1  say  so,  therefore  it  is  true 
and  right.  Can  I  count  on  your  trust  thus  far  ?  It  is 
much  to  ask,  for  I  am  disappointing  you  ;  but  it  is  not  so 
much  that  I  think  you  will  deny  it  me  ?" 

There  was  an  infinite  sweetness,  and  a  shadow  of  anx- 
iety, in  his  eyes ;  that  this  creature  owed  him  all,  to  the 
very  saving  of  her  sheer  existence,  the  man  was  too  gen- 
erous even  to  remember: — far  too  generous  to  base  on  it 
any  claim  to  her  gratitude  or  her  obedience.  He  waited 
for  the  assurance  of  her  faith  and  allegiance,  as  though 
he  were  her  debtor,  and  not  she  his  for  every  crust  she 
ate,  and  every  draught  she  drank. 

Viva  was  silent  a  moment ;  the  tears  were  in  her  eyes, 
the  tears  were  in  her  voice,  she  could  not  trust  herself  to 
speak,  for  she  was  very  proud,  and  could  not  bear  to  show 
emotion ; — the  disappointment  was  bitter,  very  bitter  to 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         129 

her.  The  great  world  had  seemed  to  open  its  gates  to 
her,  and  disclose  such  gorgeous  and  untold  glories.  With 
the  words  other  tempter  such  a  pageant  of  splendor  and 
wonder  had  spread  before  the  vivid  dreaming  fancy  of  the 
child.  Such  lands  of  enchantment  had  riseu  before  her, 
all  for  her  sovereignty,  and  lit  with  a  light  that  never 
shone  upon  earth  !  To  behold  these  swept  clown  sud- 
denly, as  impossible  and  forbidden,  was  a  trial  terrible 
and  poignant. 

Tricotrin  watched  her  mutely. 

She  stood  quiet,  the  tears  she  refused  to  let  fall  standing 
on  her  long  drooped  lashes,  her  face  at  first  very  flushed, 
and  then  equally  colorless,  all  the  keenness  of  her  disap- 
pointment and  something  of  her  haughty  willfulness  and 
resistance,  spoken  on  a  face  eloquent  of  every  thought, 
with  the  eloquence  of  the  southern  nations. 

She  looked  up  at  length  and  caught  the  gaze  of  the  eyes 
which  watched  her:  their  look  touched  and  won  all  that 
was  generous,  noble,  and  loving  in  her  temper,  all  that 
was  grateful  and  all  that  was  unselfish  ;  she  saw  that  he 
to  whom  she  knew  that  she  owed  life,  home,  protection, 
her  very  food  and  bed,  grieved  to  be  compelled  to  pain 
her,  and  asked  her  allegiance,  not  as  his  right,  but  as  her 
free  and  gracious  gift. 

Then  all  that  was  best  in  her  awoke.  She  threw  her 
arms  about  him  with  grateful  caressing  affection,  in 
a  passionate  repentance  for  that  moment's  disloyalty 
and  hesitance. 

"  What  could  you  ask  that  I  would  deny  !  I  would  give 
you  my  life,  and  you  would  have  a  right  to  it,  since  you 
saved  it !  I  do  not  care  for  the  diamonds,  or  the  roses,  or 
Paris,  or  the  Fetes,  if  you  think  I  am  better  without  them. 
It  is  enough  that  you  wish  me,  your  wish  is  my  law  I" 

Tricotrin  stroked  her  hair  tenderly,  where  her  head 
leant  against  his  heart ;  he  was  silent  for  the  instant,  and 
his  face  lighted  with  the  frank  warm  joy  which  had  come 
there  once  before  at  the  expression  of  her  affection; — he 
was  as  rejoiced  at  her  faith  in  him  as  though  he  had  never 
done  anything  to  merit,  or  give  him  title  to  demand,  it  ! 

"  I  thank  you,  Viva  mine  !"  lie  said,  with  a  force  which 
gave  almost  a  tremor  to  his  voice.  "  That  is  generously 


130  TRICOTRIN, 

and  bravely  said.  You  have  given  me  the  best  gift  there 
is  in  this  world — Trust.  In  after-years  I  will  tell  you  why 
I  seek  it  now." 

Viva  leaned  against  him,  speechless ;  she  had  given 
her  allegiance  loyally,  and  with  love,  but  she  was  a  child, 
and  her  disappointment  was  great ;  the  tears  were  still  in 
her  voice,  and  her  eyes,  and  she  could  not  bear  to  betray 
them,  lest  he  should  be  pained  to  see  that  the  trust  which 
he  asked  was  fraught  with  sorrow  to  herself. 

"And  now — another  point,"  pursued  Tricotrin.  "  This 
stranger  friend  of  yours  gave  you  costly  golden  presents  ?" 

"  Yes  ! — beautiful  ornaments  !" 

Her  voice  was  very  tremulous,  and  her  eyes  looked  up 
with  pitiful  beseeching  appeal ;  her  lovely  jeweled  toys, 
with  which  in  a  thousand  day-dreams  she  had  fancied  her- 
self a  Marquise,  an  Empress,  Marie  Antoinette  in  the 
brilliant  days  at  Versailles,  Louise  d'Orleans  in  the  gor- 
geous gatherings  of  the  Palais  Royal,  anything,  every- 
thing ! — she  should  not  surely  have  to  part  with  them  ! 

Tricotrin  read  the  look ;  and  smiled. 

"Nay,  child;  for  anything  I  take  from  you,  you  shall 
have  as  good.  You  are  feminine,  and  I  would  not  break 
your  heart  by  robbing  you  of  your  first  jewels !  You  are 
a  child  of  the  Fairies,  but  they  forgot  to  dower  you  with 
Philosophy — tan t  pis  !  But  the  jewels  your  friend  gave 
you  must  go  back  to  him,  though  }^ou  shall  be  no  loser." 

Viva's  eyes  glowed  and  dropped  with  shame. 

"  Was  it  so  wicked  to  take  them  ?  I  did  not  know — he 
said  it  would  be  cruel  and  discourteous  to  refuse  ?  I  had 
no  one  to  tell  me,  and — they  were  so  pretty  1" 

"  Wicked  ?  No  !"  said  Tricotrin,  promptly :  his  chief  de- 
sire in  all  he  said  was  to  conceal  from  her  any  hint  or 
glimpse  of  what  had  been  her  tempter's  motive  and  end,  and 
to  dissipate  in  no  iota  the  innocence  of  her  own  danger 
which  she  enjoyed.  "  It  is  nothing  to  cause  you  shame, 
Viva;  it  was  most  natural  that  the  pretty  toys  beguiled  your 
sight ;  are  you  to  be  wiser  than  all  your  generation,  or 
stronger  than  all  your  sex?  But  now  that  /know,  they 
must  be  returned  to  your  friend;  because  I  accept  obli- 
gations from  no  man,  and  neither  must  you.  We  spoke 
of  pride  when  we  were  together  last ;  there  is  a  pride  that 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         131 

you  may  cherish  in  your  heart's  heart,  Viva ;  the  pride 
which  will  never  be  laid  beneath  a  debt.  There  was  no 
one  to  tell  you,  and  you  were  a  child,  pleased  with  beau- 
tiful bagatelles,  and  there  is  nothing  to  grieve  or  to  flush 
for,  at  all,  in  the  fact  that  you  were  won  into  taking  these 
adornments.  But  remember  in  the  future  that  the  woman 
who  is  proud,  and  honors  herself,  must  take  the  gold  and 
the  gifts  of  no  man.  You  would  give  your  cheek  to  the 
caress  of  no  stranger  ;  never  take  from  him  that  for  which 
he  might,  were  it  only  in  mirth,  ask  you  for  a  caress  as 
his  payment." 

Viva  listened,  the  flush  deep  upon  her  forehead,  her 
eyes  drooped  in  humiliation,  all  the  haughty  pride  of  her 
temper  was  roused  by  and  followed  his  words,  and  the 
bitterness  of  the  golden  ornaments  was  far  exceeding  now 
the  sweetness  they  had  given. 

"  Send  them  back  to  him !  Send  them  back  !  I  hate 
them  now!"  she  said,  passionately,  while  the  hot  color 
burned  painfully  in  her  face,  and  her  lips  quivered.  "  He 
wanted  to  kiss  me  once,  and  I  told  him  I  was  no  peasant 
girl ;  but  it  showed  how  low  I  had  fallen  in  his  sight, 
how  I  had  given  him  the  right  to  despise  me  by  taking 
his  presents !" 

Her  voice  broke  down,  she  flung  herself  upon  the  grass, , 
and  sobbed  aloud  half  in  grief,  half  in  rage  ;  her  heart 
was  not  even  touched  by  the  loss  of  her  tempter,  but  her 
pride  was  wounded  to  the  quick.  In  the  stead  of  the 
diamonds  and  the  deathless  roses,  and  all  the  wondrous, 
glorious,  unknown  world,  this  Waif  and  Stray  of  the  Loire, 
who  had  the-  hauteur  of  a  child-queen,  had  only  the  ruin 
of  her  shattered  castles,  and  the  misery,  a  thousandfold 
greater,  of  having  lost  her  own  dignity,  and  stooped  to 
abasement  and  dishonor  ! 

And  Tricotrin,  who  would  have  gone  half  across  the 
world,  and  given  a.  kingdom  if  ho  had  had  one,  to  avoid 
the  sight  of  anything  feminine  in  sorrow,  found  himself, 
all  philosophic  that  lie  was,  compelled  to  look  on  what  he 
hated,  and  keep  by  him,  for  a  minute  or  two  at  least,  a 
cucumber  that,  was  very  acid. 

For  ho  loved  the  girl  with  all  the  warmth  of  his  gen- 
erous and  ardent  nature  ;  and  he  was  obliged  to  deal  her 


132  TRICOTRTN, 

something  of  this  sense  of  pain  and  of  humiliation,  lest  a 
worse  thing  should  come  unto  her,  and  the  wood-dove 
fall  a  prey  to  some  other  tercel's  beak. 

"  Oh,  Mistigri,  Mistigri  1"  murmured  he  to  that  insepa- 
rable confidante,  with  pathetic  regret.  "  How  impossible 
it  is  .for  a  philosopher  to  remain  perfectly  philosophical 
when  he  has  once  given  way  to  such  a  miserable  weak- 
ness as  to  take  an  interest  in  anything  that  is  feminine  I" 

Viva  lay  on  the  grass  in  an  abandonment  of  shame  and 
sorrow,  not  for  the  golden  toys,  still  less  for  their  donor, 
but  for  those  glorious  castles  in  the  air,  that  were  all 
hurled  down  and  had  vanished  like  a  dream  of  the  night, 
and  far  more  for  the  terrible  sense  that  filled  her  of  guilti- 
ness and  shame. 

The  forbidden  Fruit  that  had  looked  so  fair  had  changed 
to  the  darkest  and  bitterest  of  ashes  in  the  lips  of  this 
proud  young  daughter  of  Eve. 

Tricotrin  let  the  emotion  have  its  way ;  and  his  own 
thoughts  wandered,  in  a  fiery  wrath,  from  the  child  to  her 
tempter,  and  from  him  to  many  things  and  many  memo- 
ries that  were  dark  and  heavy,  and  rarely  allowed  to  cloud 
a  mind  which  best  loved  the  light  of  the  sun,  and  the 
noonday  of  clear  philosophies,  and  the  rich  colors  of 
wine-cups,  and  the  aerial  hues  of  a  poet's  fancies. 

Then — when  it  had  nearly  spent  itself — he  stooped  and 
laid  his  hand  on  her  bowed  head. 

"  Viva  mine,  keep  thy  tears  back  :  life  may  want  them, 
thou  art  a  woman !  Do  not  weep  till  thou  hast  erred,  and 
that  most  surely  thou  hast  not  done  now.  Let  none 
shame  thee,  save  thyself;  and  let  that  never  be.  Thou 
art  a  child,  and  hast  a  child's  love  of  pretty  toys ;  that  is 
all ;  no  harm  is  done.  And  remember — if  thou  grievest  I 
am  grieved.  It  is  I  who  have  disappointed  thee;  and  each 
sigh  thou  shalt  give  for  thy  lost  bagatelles  and  thy  ban- 
ished castles,  will  be  a  reproach  to  me." 

He  had  judged  rightly  the  chord  to  touch.  Viva  could 
be  led  thus,  though  driven  never. 

She  lifted  her  head,  and  smiled  at  him  through  her  sor- 
rows, a  smile  very  loving,  very  wistful,  and  very  proud. 

"  Then — I  will  not  give  them  one  regret !" 

And  he  knew  that  the  word  she  gave  she  would  keep. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         133 


CHAPTER  XII. 

"  Misttgri  !  Can  a  man  be  ever  certain  of  his  philosophy  ? 
Brntus  had  served  her  faithfully  all  his  life,  and  broke 
down  in  his  very  last  hour  1"  said  Tricotrin,  plaintively, 
as  he  stood  smoking  under  the  starlight  in  the  porch, 
when  Yiva  had  sobbed  herself  to  sleep  under  the  eaves, 
with  the  tears  still  glistening  on  her  closed  lashes.  "  You 
and  I  were  wretched  sentimentalists  in  saving  the  Waif, 
and  I  suppose  we  shall  be  so  to  the  end,  having  once  con- 
cerned ourselves  with  anything  so  irrational  as  the  upset- 
ting of  her  most  far-sighted  and  excellently  judicious 
mother's  plans  I  have  been  shockingly  weak  and  uu- 
philosophic  to-day  ; — contemptible  I  Sentiment  the  sec- 
ond ;  and  quite  as  bad  as  the  first.  I  have  interfered 
between  her  and  the  most  lucrative  trade  of  all  for  women 
who  cannot  be  duchesses.  My  young  lord's  introduction 
would  have  been  an  admirable  one,  and  he  was  right  that 
diamonds  would  have  fallen  in  her  lap  by  thousands; — 
she  would  have  ruined  her  hundreds  and  tens  of  hundreds 
before  two  years,  I  dare  say.  The  world  would  have 
raved  of  her,  and  she  would  have  had  a  woman's  most 
delicious  empire, — the  Power  of  Destruction.  That  young 
man  was  wise  and  practical,  and  I — I  wras  unworldly, 
unphilosophic,  everything  that  is  contemptible,  Mistigri ! 
What  business  had  I  to  put  my  oar  in  the  boat,  instead 
of  letting  her  drift  down  the  stream  to  the  wine-washed 
roses  and  Messieurs  les  Grands  Seigneurs?  Ah,  grand'- 
mere,  hark  a  moment !" 

The  little  old  brown  woman,  looking  like  a  figure  out 
of  one  of  Ostade's  pictures,  as  she  moved  across  the  broad 
swathes  of  moonlight  thai  checkered  her  kitchen,  came 
toward  him,  trembling  somewhat,  for  she  had  a  horrible 
doubt  that  something  had  gone  wrong  about  the  Prince 
Faineant,  and  that  she  had  acted  with  an  infamous  want 
of  discretion  and  judgment. 

12 


134  TRICOTRIN, 

"  Grand 'mere,  why  did  you  let  that  young  wolf  in 
lamb's  clothing  get  the  ear  of  the  Waif?" 

Grand'mere  began  to  tremble  more  and  more,  and 
broke  into  a  stream  of  self-excuses  and  of  protestation. 
Tricotrin  cut  them  short. 

"  I  know,  friend  Virelois,  I  know.  You  are  a  woman, 
and  he  was  comely  to  look  at,  and  you  fancied  you  heard 
the  chimes  of  bridal  bells,  and  you  thought  he  was  a  no- 
ble prince  in  disguise !" 

"  Oh,  mon  Dieu,  Tricotrin!  How  do  you  know  all  you 
do?" 

"Little  birds  tell  me,"  responded  Tricotrin  promptly. 
"  Silly  woman !  What  do  you  suppose  the  swallows  fly 
in  and  out  of  the  ivy  all  the  day  long  for,  if  it  be  not  on 
messages  ?" 

Grand'mere  paid  no  attention ;  her  eyes  were  sad  and 
anxious. 

"  Is  there  anything  wrong  with  the  young  man  ?"  she 
asked.  "I  had  my  fears;  I  did  what  1  could.  But  you 
see " 

"  It  was  the  old  .story.  Love  laughing  at  locksmiths ; 
and  the  locksmiths  do  not  exist  who  can  shut  in  such  a 
thing  as  the  Waif.  Well,  the  young  man  will  not  come 
here  any  more ;  and  if  you  chance  to  hear  he  bears  a 
high  name,  keep  the  knowledge  to  yourself,  that  is  all. 
There  are  no  disguised  princes  in  the  world;  and  as  for 
bridal  bells,  no  man  loves  them  very  much,  and  rich  men 
not  at  all." 

Grand'mere  shuddered,  lifting  her  hands. 

"Ah — h — h!  The  nobles  are  so  wicked  1" 

"Not  in  the  least,"  Tricotrin  contradicted.  "They  are 
no  more  wicked  than  other  men — not  so  much  so  indeed, 
because  tbey  are  educated.  Vice  is  as  ripe  in  villages  as 
in  cities,  and  to  one  peasant  that  'falls'  for  a  gentle- 
man's wooing  there  are  tenscore  that  do  so  at  the  asking 
of  Pierre,  the  postillion,  or  Jacquot,  the  cowherd.  Well, 
grand'mere,  you  loved  honor  and  honesty  all  the  days  of 
your  life — what  have  your  deities  done  for  you?" 

"  Kept  my  pot  empty  many  a  time,  but  my  conscience 
clean,  thank  God." 

Tricotrin  looked  at  her  with  the  smile  that  was  epigram, 
satire,  sunlight,  and  sadness  all  in  one. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  135 

"Grand'mere!  You,  the  disciple  of  virtue,  are  the 
strongest  irony  upon  her  that  a  satirist  could  paint !  Your 
pot  empty? — ah!  And  if  you  had  been  a  philosophically 
wicked  woman  it  would  have  overflowed  with  fat  fowls 
and  good  rice  ?  This  Prince  Faineant  was  the  wise  man, 
and  I  the  fool.  Jeanne,  the  honest  woman,  clicks  about 
in  wooden  shoes,  sleeps  on  a  flock  bed,  lives  on  black 
crusts  and  onion  soups,  gets  withered  and  crippled  and 
weather-stained  before  she  is  at  middle  age,  toils  in  the 
snow  and  the  sun  to  keep  body  and  soul  together,  and 
dies  in  the  workhouse  to  be  buried  as  a  pauper.  Euphra- 
sie,  the  bad  woman,  has  pretty,  warm,  broidered  slippers, 
sleeps  between  cambric  sheets,  lies  in  cachemires  as  her 
carriage  rolls  along,  eats  and  drinks  the  best  of  all  lands, 
laughs  through  life  to  a  gay  opera  air,  has  a  happy  pa- 
ganism that  makes  her  quite  untroubled  with  her  future, 
and  when  she  retires  on  her  pirated  gains,  can  buy  abso- 
lution from  any  church  extant,  die  in  the  odor  of  sanc- 
tity, and  have  her  noble  qualities  blazoned  on  a  marble 
tomb.  That  is  what  virtue  and  vice  are,  grand'mere,  and 
how  they  pay  their  servitors." 

Grand'mere  stood  in  the  strip  of  moonlight,  her  head 
pensively  on  one  side,  her  little  brown  face  sad  and  be- 
wildered. Then  suddenly  the  old  woman  raised  herself 
erect,  and  her  still  bright  eyes  took  a  resolute  light. 

"  That  is  true,  Tricotrin — that  is  terribly  true.  There  is 
not  a  word  of  it  but  is  fearfully,  horribly,  shamefully  true. 
But  see  here,  Tricotrin,  though  I  am  old  and  poor,  and 
but  for  you  most  like  should  be  now  dead  of  want,  there 
is  something  I  would  not  part  with  fur  all  that  gilded 
shame  ;  it  is  this — -just  this:  to  know,  all  my  life  through, 
that  no  man  ever  had  the  right  to  scorn  me;  to  know, 
all  my  life  through,  that  they  were  bound  to  say,  'that 
woman  is  miserably  poor,  but.  she  cannot  be  bought.' 
There  is  something  sweet  in  that — a  sweetness  that  dues 
not  perish.  Yet  1  had  my  tempters  too.  I  was  fair  to 
lobk  on  when  I  w  as  young.  And  I  had  wealth  offered 
to  me  if  I  would  have  taken  shame.  But  it  wasjusl  this 
which  saved  me,  Tricotrin — not  religion,  perhaps,  and 
not  pride  of  a  surety,  but  just  this:  that  no  man  should 
ever  feel  the  sex  of  his  mother  was  outraged  in  me,  that 


136  TRICOTRIN, 

no  man  should  ever  say,  '  I  can  despise  you,  for  have  I 
not  bought  you?'" 

Tricotrin's  eyes  grew  very  soft  as  he  heard  her.  When 
her  words  were  ended  he  bent  low  with  a  tender  rever- 
ence to  the  little,  old,  wrinkled,  white-haired  peasant. 

"  Grand'mere,  you  are  a  good  woman  !  If  that  temper 
were  more  taught  to  girlhood  there  would  be  little  vice 
for  which  to  rail  against  men." 

"And  that  is  true,  too  !"  sighed  grand'mere  as  she 
went  back  to  the  fire  to  boil  a  pot  of  chocolate  for  him. 

Tricotrin  stood  long  in  the  moonlit  doorway  alone, 
while  Mistigri  swung  herself  in  the  ivy  after  the  moths, 
and  the  quiet  night  lay  soft  and  dark  upon  the  country, 
while  now  and  then  the  lowing  of  cattle,  the  bark  of  a 
dog,  the  chimes  of  a  belfry,  broke  faintly  on  the  stillness. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

When  Viva  awoke  in  the  morning  with  the  birds,  it 
was,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  with  a  certain  dull  pain 
at  her  heart,  with  a  certain  dreamy  sense  of  some  loss 
and  some  sorrow.  She  sat  up  in  her  little  bed,  and  looked 
at  her  gold  toys  where  they  stood,  placed  close  to  rejoice 
her  waking  vision,  on  an  oak  chest  under  her  casement; 
and  as  she  looked  the  tears  swam  in  her  eyes,  her  pretty 
white  chest  heaved  with  a  quick  sob.  It  was  not  alto- 
gether alone  for  the  things ;  she  had  dreamed  such 
dreams  through  her  Prince  Faineant,  and  those  dreams 
were  all  dead  forever ! 

Moreover,  her  first  disenchantment,  her  first  sense  of 
shame,  were  bitter  to  bear,  and  though  she  had  cared 
nothing  at  all  for  her  handsome  young  wooer,  She  had 
cared  very  much  for  all  that  he  had  offered  her:  so  much 
so  that  she  might  have  taken  that  desire  for  change  to 
have  been  love  for  him,  as  many  girls  do,  had  not  her 
own  true  and  strong  affection  for  Tricotrin  preserved  her 
from  the  error.     The  homage,  the  flattery,  the  sense  of 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         137 

her  power,  the  belief  in  his  submission  to  it,  had  been  so 
delightful  to  her  ;  all  the  native  coquetry  in  her  had  so 
exulted  in  its  first  exercise,  all  the  imperious  vanity  in 
her  had  found  such  charm  in  its  victory,  that  Viva  mourned 
the  loss  of  her  Faust  with  a  poignant  regret,  which 
though  only  egotism  made  her  almost  think  it  was  ten- 
derness. It  was  not :  any  other  would  have  done  equally 
well  in  his  place,  and  with  her  fancies  equally  flattered, 
Yiva  would  have  been  equally  happy.  But  as  it  was, 
there  was  no  one  to  substitute  for  him,  and  therefore  she 
gave  him  a  generous  regret  that  would  have  looked  very 
much  like  love  to  him  had  he  seen  her  half  risen  on  the 
little  white  couch,  with  her  hair  falling  over  her  bare 
shoulders,  with  her  great  eyes  swimming,  and  her  lovely 
mouth  swollen  with  tears. 

But  Viva  was  brave  and  was  true  to  her  word.  She 
had  many  faults  and  more  foibles ;  but  she  had  the  one 
supreme  excellence  of  unerring  courage.  She  had  said 
she  would  give  all  her  hagatelles  up;  and  she  did  not 
once  waver.  When  she  had  flung  the  cold  bright  water 
over  her  face  and  form,  and  dressed,  and  knelt  awhile 
under  the  wooden  cross  which  grand'mere  had  placed  in 
her  chamber,  Viva  was  nerved  to  sacrifice  ;  and  in  one 
sense  she  hated  the  things, — they  had  wounded  her 
pride, — she  had  no  wish  to  keep  them. 

Yet  her  tears  fell  on  them  one  by  one  as  she  looked  at 
each  for  the  last  time  of  all,  and  put  them  by,  one  by  one, 
in  a  basket.  Though  she  did  not  know  it,  she  had  cause 
to  weep, — it  was  her  first  faith  broken,  her  first  illusion 
faded,  her  first  trust  betrayed.  Youth  is  wise  in  its  pres- 
cience when  it  recoils  from  betrayal  as  the  deadliest  thing 
that  awaits  it  in  life. 

When  they  were  all  placed  in  their  basket,  Viva  looked 
at  her  face  in  her  own  tiny  mirror :  "I  promised  him  I 
would  not  have  one  regret,"  she  thought;  and  she  knew 
her  face  looked  very  tell-tale  of  regret  indeed. 

The  child  was  frank  and  honest  as  the  day;  she  had 
not  learned  yet  even  to  dream  of  concealing  what  she 
felt.  But  she  was  courageous  and  she  was  proud  ;  above 
all  she  was  resolute  net  to  give  pain  to  Tricotrin.  And  she 
dashed  her  tears  away,  and  leant  out  into  the  fresh  niorn- 

12* 


138  TRICOTRIN, 

ing  air,  and  tried  to  sing  one  of  ber  river-songs  with  her 
old  gayety;  then  ran  swiftly  down  the  stairs,  and  placed 
the  jewels  in  his  hands  where  he  stood  smoking,  and 
rushed  away  without  a  word  into  the  sunlight.  Those 
pretty  bijoux ! — and  it  was  not  those  alone  for  which  she 
sorrowed — it  was  for  all  the  dreams  that  were  gone  with 
them! 

Tricotrin  did  not  seek  to  follow  her ;  he  comprehended 
her  wish  for  solitude  ;  he  stood  looking  at  the  toys  with 
a  curious  conflict  of  emotions  on  his  face.  If  he  had 
obeyed  his  impulse,  he  could  have  crushed  them  all  into 
atoms  beneath  his  heel. 

"  Pretty  things  with  which  to  chaffer  and  barter  away 
a  life  !"  he  said  in  his  teeth,  as  he  folded  them  aside  in  a 
packet  and  addressed  it  to  the  young  man's  name.  Then 
with  it  thrust  into  his  pocket  he  went  across  the  fields 
toward  Villiers. 

As  he  went  he  softly  took  from  the  breast  of  his  blouse, 
and  touched  with  loving  fingers,  the  Attavante's  Dante. 

"  I  did  not  think  to  part  ever  with  you,"  he  said  gently 
to  the  book  as  though  it  were  a  loving  thing.  "  But  faith 
must  be  kept  with  the  Waif;  she  must  have  her  toys 
back ;  and  there  is  no  other  way.  Since  you  must  go  you 
shall  go  to  him." 

He  looked  long  and  wistfully  at  the  book's  familiar  face ; 
then  put  it  into  his  breast  more  tenderly  than  he  would 
have  done  had  it  been  a  roll  of  banker's  notes  for  thousands. 
He  loved  the  thing;  it  had  been  his  from  his  childhood, 
and  had  accompanied  him  through  so  many  changeful 
years ;  the  only  relic  he  had  kept  of  a  long-perished  life 
forever  lost. 

But  he  had  promised  Viva  the  equals  of  her  golden 
toys  :  wealth  he  had  none  :  the  book  must  go.  He  would 
have  worked  willingly  for  the  jewels'  worth  ;  but  that 
must  have  been  slow  purchase  of  them,  and  he  would  not 
have  the  child  mourn  her  playthings  for  an  hour  more 
than  was  inevitable.  The  leagues  brought  him  to  Villiers  ; 
the  same  route  which  he  had  traversed  the  day  after  he 
had  first  found  her  among  the  clematis.  He  paused  at  the 
little  picturesque  building  that  stood  in  English  fashion 
beside  the  huge  entrance  gates.     A  comely  brown-eyed, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  139 

laughing  woman,  with  children  clinging  to  her  skirt, 
greeted  him  with  delighted  welcome  as  he  appeared;  it 
was  Ninette,  who  had  long  been  Valentin's  wife,  and  who 
was  happy  in  the  tender,  sunny,  graceful  fashion  with 
which  the  French  peasant  will  so  often  attain  happiness 
even  in  the  midst  of  poverty:  a  dragon,  however,  that 
never  visited  the  home  of  the  little  cmondam  fruit-seller. 

"Is  the  young  lord  at  the  chateau,  Ninette?"  he  asked, 
after  submitting  to  all  the  greetings  of  the  little  brunette, 
who  loved  hin>well  as  the  founder  of  all  her  wedded 
peace  by  his  timely  counsel  to  the  over-humble  Valentin. 
Ninette  shook  her  head:  the  young  lord  had  left  Villiers 
last  evening. 

Tricotrin  put  the  packet  into  her  hands. 

"  Give  that  to  his  servant,  Ninette;  and  say  nothing  of 
who  brought  it." 

Ninette's  eyes  grew  grave  and  anxiods  a  moment. 

"Surely  I  will;  and  be  silent  as  the  dead.  But — is  it 
true,  Tricotrin? — I  heard  the  other  day  that  Milord  was 
seen  very  often  with  the  little  angel  at  grand'mere's?" 

"It  is  true,"  said  Tricotrin,  curtly.  "But  he  will  be 
seen  no  more,  I  promise  you." 

"  That  is  well,  I  am  glad  you  are  come,"  murmured 
Madame  Valentin.  "  I  got  a  little  anxious  ;  1  remembered 
what  you  told  me  once  about  those  people's  love.  And 
the  little  one  is  so  young,  and  so  proud!" 

Tricotrin  nodded  ;  he  did  not  care  to  pursue  the  subject ; 
and  after  a  few  kindly  questions  concerning  her  family 
and  their  welfare,  he  passed  onward  into  the  park  up  the 
wooded  terraces.  Ninette  knew  him  too  well  of  old  to 
ask  him  whither  he  went. 

But  as  she  turned  into  her  cottage  her  face  was  grave, 
and  she  stood  pensively  before  her  old  mother,  who  was 
sitting  by  the  sunshiny  easement,  shelling  peas  and  wash- 
ing cabbages. 

••  .Mdi  her  !  I  hope  the  pretty  child  will  never  bring  woe 
to  Tricotrin  '.'" 

The  old  woman  cracked  a  pea-pod  sharply. 

"  Viva?"  she  murmured.  "She  owes  him  everything. 
I  dare  say  she  will  break  his  heart  some  day.  That  is 
the  way  of  them  all." 


140  TRICOTRIN, 

Such  was  the  experience  of  her  own  life  of  eighty  and 
two  years  ! 

Meanwhile  Tricotrin  went  up  toward  the  castle.  There 
was  a  graver  and  more  careworn  thought  upon  him  than 
was  usual  there.  There  was  something  of  impatience  and 
of  pain.  He  had  resolved  to  keep  faith  with  the  young 
man,  as  the  young  man  had  chosen  exile  in  lieu  of  expo- 
sure ;  and  the  former  served  Viva  by  far  the  best,  inso- 
much as  it  kept  the  offense  against  her  untold;  and  a  girl's 
name  is  like  a  peach: — the  down  once  brushed  off  the 
fruit  bears  the  trace  of  the  rough  handling  forever.  Still, 
though  he  did  not  go  to  expose  Estmere's  son,  it  was  Est- 
mere  whom  he  sought.  He  had  heard  yester-eve,  as  he 
had  come  through  the  country,  that  the  noble  had  re- 
turned for  a  brief  time  to  his  pleasure-home. 

He  soon  found  himself  in  the  gardens  ;  the  same  gar- 
dens where  he  had  spoken  to  Valentin  among  the  aza- 
leas. Years  made  no  difference  here;  the  turf  only  grew 
smoother,  the  flowers  only  more  abundant,  under  the  cul- 
ture that  wealth  commanded.  All  the  old  beauty  that  the 
place  had  known  in  the  days  of  the  Regency  bloomed 
afresh  over  it  as  though  it  had  never  been  destroyed  under 
the  neglect  of  long  years  and  an  impoverished  race  :  it 
had  looked  to  Viva  like  some  marvelous  chateau  of  the 
Renaissance  times,  fit  for  the  splendid  prison  of  the  Sleep- 
ing Beauty,  and  for  once  her  extravagant  fancy  had  not 
led  her  astray. 

Tricotrin  knew  that  the  English  earl  rose  early;  and 
that  most  early  mornings  brought  him  out  on  the  terraces 
of  Villiers  before  the  more  indolent  throng  of  his  guests 
had  awakened.  Though  the  name  of  the  foreign  race 
never  by  choice  passed  his  lips,  there  was  little  concern- 
ing their  life  with  which  he  was  not  acquainted,  down 
even  to  the  trifling  details  of  their  daily  habits  ;  and  here 
his  knowledge  proved  aright.  While  still  far  off  himself 
among  the  labyrinths  of  roses  he  saw  Estmere  ;  walking 
slowly  before  the  chateau  with  one  companion  only,  and 
followed  step  for  step,  by  a  great  Russian  boarhound. 

The  sun  shone  full  upon  the  terrace,  and  on  the  tall 
form  of  the  English  nobleman;  it  looked  taller  still  be- 
side the  diminutive  person  of  the  foreign  statesman  with 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         141 

him,  and  his  face  had  the  same  beauty,  scarcely  aged 
since  Tricotrin  had  looked  in  on  him  in  his  banqucting- 
room:  the  fair,  delicate,  grave  beauty  of  one  in  whom 
pride  was  stronger  than  passion,  and  the  intellect  domi- 
nated the  senses.  The  face  was  calm,  cold,  full  of 
thought ;  the  lines  of  the  mouth  were  musing  and  some- 
what disdainful,  the  eyes  were  blue,  luminous,  pene- 
trating, revealing  nothing,  save  when,  in  very  rare  mo- 
ments of  pleasure,  a  smile  would  gleam  in  them  that 
women  valued  as  they  did  not  value  the  less  hardly- won 
smiles  of  men  more  easily  amused  and  more  rapidly  in- 
terested. 

There  was  no  smile  in  them  now,  but  a  displeased  sur- 
prise as  they  glanced  over  the  gardens  and  saw  an  in- 
truder there. 

"A  man  in  a  blouse! — a  man  with  a  monkey!  Come 
to  beg,  I  presume,"  murmured  the  earl.  "  What  can 
the  gardeners  and  the  park-rangers  be  about?" 

His  companion  looked  where  he  looked;  but  with  a 
differenl  expression. 

"Why!    That  is  Tricotrin!" 

"And  who  is  Tricotrin  ?" 

"A  folio  could  not  tell  !" 

"  I  imagine  one  word  could!" 

"And  what  word  would  that  be?" 

"A  scamp,"  said  Estmere,  with  his  eyes  still  on  the 
man  with  a  monkey. 

"Oh,  no!"  cried  the  foreigner,  eagerly.  "You  mis- 
take; indeed  you  mistake.  Tricotrin  has  the  most  mar- 
velous talents,  the  most  marvelous  influence  over  the 
populace;  he  might  be  anything  if  he  chose,  and  there  is 
nothing  he  does  not  manage  to  know.  He  is  a  charac- 
ter;— quite  a  character!'1 

"I  do  not  like  characters,'' said  Estmere,  chillily.  "A 
man  lias  lost  the  fact  before  he  acquires  the  title.  'A 
-Teat  character,'  says  the  world  when  it  means  'a  gnat. 
rogue !'  " 

•Tricotrin  is  no  rogue " 

"No?  Then  if  he  be  your  visitor,  allow  me  to  leave 
you  to  him." 

"He  is  not  my  visitor,"  muttered  the  French  States- 


142  TRICOTRIN, 

man  hurriedly,  embarrassed  between  his  desire  to  speak 
to  the  new-comer  and  his  fear  of  his  host's  courtly  con- 
tempt, "lam  not  aware  how  he  comes  in  your  gardens, 
but  indeed — Tricotrin  is  so  well  with  the  people,  it  does 
not  do  to  incense  him.  No  government  dare  touch  him, 
though  any  other  man  would  be  proscribed  for  one-half 
what  he  utters.     He  is  a  rank  democrat;  but " 

"A  democrat !"  echoed  the  cold  musical  tones  of  the 
owner  of  Villiers.  "  With  advanced  views  of  '  Progress  ' 
that  shall  turn  the  lowest  strata  topmost !  With  too 
noble  a  spirit  to  be  restricted  by  the  petty  laws  of  Meum 
and  Tuum  !  With  a  passion  for  liberty  conceived  in  a 
wine-shop  and  nursed  at  the  galleys  1  Thanks,  I  have 
no  desire  for  his  presence  in  my  grounds.  Since  you 
know  him,  will  you  be  kind  enough  to  order  him 
away?" 

Tricotrin  had  drawn  near  enough  by  this  time  to  hear 
the  concluding  phrases,  but  he  had  looked  so  earnestly  at 
Estmere,  and  as  he  had  looked  had  been  so  thoroughly 
occupied  with  his  own  thoughts,  that  he  had  not  noted 
the  first  words ;  at  the  last  all  his  archest  laughter 
gleamed  radiantly  in  his  eyes  : 

"  Order  me  away  ?  Ah,  M.  Pharamonde,  what  do  you 
say  to  that  ?  You  know  I  could  bring  all  my  Loirais 
back  with  me  to  sack  this  dainty  place!" 

"Threats?"  said  Estmere  with  cold  disdain; — and  he 
glanced  at  his  French  friend  to  see  how  the  insolent  chal- 
lenge was  received  and  resented. 

Pharamonde,  a  minister  of  timorous  policies, — who 
caressed  the  people  because  he  feared  them,  as  the  hand 
of  a  coward  caresses  the  head  of  a  mastiff; — tried  to 
laugh  off  the  embarrassment  he  felt  between  his  desire 
to  propitiate  the  Bohemian,  and  yet  hold  his  dignity  with 
the  Noble.  But  the  jest  he  essayed  fell  dead.  Tricotrin 
stood  unmoved,  in  merciless  amusement  at  his  difficulty; 
Estmere  turned  away  in  a  scorn  he  scarcely  encfeavored 
to  conceal. 

"I  will  leave  you,  Pharamonde,  to  converse  with — 
your  friend !" 

The  minister  winced  and  reddened ;  Tricotrin  laughed 
outright. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         143 

"Nay,  I  claim  no  friendship  with  M.  Pharamonde ; 
and  my  business  lies  with  you,  my  Lord  Earl." 

Estmere  surveyed  him  with  the  amazement  of  a  great 
man  whom  no  familiarities  ever  approach. 

"  I  never  have  business  with  strangers ;  and — by  what 
right  do  you  intrude  in  my  gardens'!"' 

"  Bah  !  The  right  that  I  found  a  door  ready  open :  do 
you  statesmen  want  any  other  excuse  for  intruding  into 
a  neighbor's  empire?  Only  you  go  farther; — you  rifle 
his  treasuries — I  do  not  touch  even  one  of  your  rosebuds. 
A  stranger,  am  I  ?  Ah  !  Well,  M.  Pharamonde  here 
will  vouch  for  me  ;  vouch  at  any  rate  that  I  did  not  come 
out  of  the  galleys  ;  and  that  I  will  not  dance  the  carmag- 
nole yet  on  your  terraces." 

Estmere's  eyes  rested  on  him  as  he  spoke;  eyes  well 
used  to  read  character  keenly,  well  able  to  penetrate 
through  the  surface  of  all  things.  He  had  never  seen 
any  one  like  the  man  who  thus  addressed  him, — a  man 
of  the  people,  in  a  blue  blouse,  and  with  a  little  black 
monkey  peering  over  his  shoulder,  yet  a  man  with  the 
head  of  a  sun-god  and  the  rich  ringing  voice  of  a  gentle- 
man. 

"  Come,  M.  Pharamonde !"  cried  Tricotrin.  "  Stand  my 
sponsor  for  once  !  Assure  Lord  Estmere  that  the  imper- 
tinence in  me  of  being  original  has  not  as  yet  led  to  the 
addendum  of  being  criminal;  which  he  appears  to  con- 
sider is  its  natural  and  due  development!" 

"Indeed,  Tricotrin," murmured  the  minister,  not  know- 
ing very  well  how  to  reply.  "  You  mistake  entirely;  I 
was  about  to  assure  my  lord  how  invariably  for  good  is 
the  singular  influence  you  exercise  over  the  people  I" 

"I  doubt  if  'my  lord'  will  believe  that ;  he  has  qo  love 
for  democrats.  Still  it  may  suffice  to  make  him  do  what 
I  want — buy  this  book  of  me." 

Estmere — who  had  paused  in  some  interest,  and  in 
more  distaste,  at  the  interruption  which  aroused  sufficient 
surprise  in  him  to  make  him  remain  a  listener  and  a  spec- 
tator of  the  unknown  intruder  on  hia  privacy — glanced 
at  the  volume  and  thought  to  himself  that  the  eccentricity 
of  this  new-comer  was  little  short  of  insanity.  Yet  that 
mere  glance  told  him,  a  famed  connoisseur  in  such  mat- 


144  TRICOTRIN, 

ters,  that  the  book  was  a  most  rare  one  :  was  it  possible 
that  the  man  had  stolen  it  ? 

Tricotrin,  with  his  swift  intuition,  read  the  doubt  of 
him;  and  the  humorous  laughter  glittered  more  archly 
and  ironically  in  his  eyes. 

"Look  at  it,  monseigneur !"  he  said,  holding  it  out. 
"  No  thief's  hands  have  soiled  it.  Will  you  put  it  among 
your  treasures  at  Beaumanoir  ?" 

"  Beaumanoir!" 

Lord  Estmere  echoed  in  some  involuntary  surprise  the 
name  of  his  old  native  home :  what  could  a  French  wan- 
derer, he  wondered,  know  of  it  and  his  world-famous 
library  ?  But  he  took  the  volume  and  turned  its  leaves 
over  in  all  a  connoisseur's  interest. 

"A  genuine  Attavante!"  he  murmured,  "and  in  per- 
fect condition." 

The  minister  beside  him  glanced  over  his  arm  at  it : 

"The  Attavante's  Dante!"  he  cried.  "Why,  Trico- 
trin, that  is  the  very  book  for  which  you  refused  untold 
gold  from  the  Cardinal  last  year  at  Nice  !" 

Tricotrin  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  I  did  not  want  the  money  then:  I  do  now.  Besides, 
I  have  no  affection  for  Monsignori.  I  have  brought  Earl 
Eustace  the  book  because  he  has  a  love  of  such  things, 
a  love  more  genuine  than  the  mere  collector's  pride  of  ac- 
cumulation and  possession." 

Estmere's  eyes  were  lifted  to  look  at  him  for  one  mo- 
ment as  the  words  "Earl  Eustace"  were  spoken: — to  be 
called  by  his  baptismal  name !  No  such  familiarity  had 
ever  been  taken  in  his  life  with  him.  He  said  nothing, 
however ;  but  continued  his  examination  of  the  literary 
treasure. 

"  You  need  the  money?"  he  asked  at  length. 

Tricotrin  gave  a  gesture  of  half  haughty  impatience. 

"My  lord,  all  the  questions  you  need  concern  yourself 
with  are, — what  is  it  worth,  and  whether  you  wish  for 
it.  There  are  hundreds  in  Europe  who  will  buy  it  if  you 
do  not." 

Estmere  was  silent :  he  felt  himself  to  be  justly  re- 
buked, and  proud  as  he  was,  he  liked  the  rebuke,  and 
liked  the  speaker  better  for  it. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         145 

"It  is  a  perfect  copy,"  he  said,  turning  to  the  French 
minister.  "What  did  the  Cardinal  you  allude  to  offer 
for  it?" 

His  friend  named  the  price. 

"Too  much  by  one-half,"  struck  in  Tricotrin.  "I  have 
no  patience  for  those  fools'  prices; — after  all,  what  is  an 
'antique?'  Only  something  grown  mouldy  by  age  and 
disuse !  And  with  a  book,  like  a  man,  the  lack  of  pedi- 
gree matters  nothing,  if  the  pages  within  be  writ  fair." 

The  sentiment  was  too  democratic  for  the  person  it  was 
addressed  to,  and  he  made  no  reply:  but  with  another 
look  at  the  miniatures  of  the  Dante  he  determined  to  give 
it  a  home  in  his  library. 

"If  you  will  accept  the  Cardinal's  very  fair  price,  the 
book  is  mine,"  he  said.  "It  is  fully  worth  it  as  biblio- 
poles' treasures  go." 

Tricotrin  bowed  his  head:  and  Estmere  thought  as  he 
saw  the  gesture,  "that  man  bows  like  my  equal;— and 
with  infinite  grace.  What  can  he  possibly  be  ?  Surely 
no  common  vagrant." 

He  paused  a  moment,  strongly  inclined  to  enter  into 
more  converse  with  this  stranger,  whose  frankness,  and 
whose  singularity  attracted  him:  but  old  habit,  natural 
reserve,  and  an  aristocrat's  detestation  of  democracy  and 
its  professors  made  him  resist  the  impulse:  he  gave  the 
Attavante  back  to  Tricotrin. 

"I  will  send  you  the  gold,  and  be  good  enough  to  re- 
turn the  book  to  the  bearer.  If  you  will  go  within,  my 
people  will  give  you  some  breakfast." 

Tricot rin's  forehead  Hushed  red. 

"I  remain  here,"  he  said,  curtly.  And  I  do  not  require 
your  hospitality." 

"Ah,  Estmere  1  that  man  is  so  proud,"  whispered  Phar- 
amonde.  Estmere  took  no  notice,  but  passed  into  the 
house,  through  an  open  window;  he  half  repented  that 
he  had  bought  the  Attavante;  still, — the  man  must  have 
wanted  the  money,  or  he  would  qo1  have  offered  i1  for  sale; 
and  it  was  of  genuine  worth  and  authenticity. 

Tricotrin  paced  up  ami  down  the  terrace  with  restless 
uneven  steps;  the  French  Btatesman  approached  him. 

13 


146  TR1C0TRIN, 

"  Tricotrin !  if  you  needed  gold  why  not  have  asked 
me?" 

Tricotrin's  eagle  glance  flashed  on  him. 

"  Gifts  to  men  of  my  station  are  bribes  :  and,  if  they 
are  not  that,  they  are  alms.     I  take  neither  1" 

"But  a  wage  for  a  fair  service?  Look  you,  what  ser- 
vice you  might  render  the  government " 

"By  making  the  flocks  submit  still  more  passively  to 
be  shorn,  and  the  droves  to  be  driven  out  still  more  do- 
cilely to  perish  in  the  war-tracks  ?     It  is  not  my  work." 

"  Nay,  nay !"  murmured  the  facile  and  courteous  states- 
man. "  Not  that.  But  by  the  use  of  your  influence  over 
the  people  at  the  elections " 

"  I  never  interfere  in  such  matters." 

"Why  so?" 

"  Why  ?  Because  if  I  did  I  must  show  them  the  naked 
truth  as  I  see  it,  and  if  the  nations  once  saw  that  of  those 
whom  they  call  rulers,  the  world  would  be  red  with  a  sea 
of  blood.  For  the  people  are  long  submissive  as  the 
camel ;  but  when  once  they  rise  they  are  tigers.  We, 
who  know  that,  tremble  to  bid  them  to  throw  off  their 
overladen  burdens,  lest  the  patient  beast  that  has  knelt 
in  pain  for  so  long  should  rise,  transformed,  with  talon 
and  fang,  to  destroy  both  his  kind  and  his  drivers." 

He  spoke  with  passion,  with  more  bitterness  too  than 
was  common  with  him :  Pharamonde  looked  at  him  almost 
with  fear,  and  was  silent: 

"That  is  not  the  usual  hesitation  of  the  demagogue," 
he  thought. 

"I  am  no  demagogue,"  said  Tricotrin,  with  rapid  divi- 
nation of  his  musing.  "  Do  you  know  what  the  dema- 
gogue is  ?  The  man  who  rouses  the  camels  into  impa- 
tience of  their  burdens,  that  he  may  rifle  the  baggage  as 
it  falls  to  the  ground  in  the  strife." 

"Milord  sends  you  this,"  interrupted  a  servant,  ap- 
proaching him  with  the  gold  for  the  Dante. 

Tricotrin  took  it,  and  gave  the  book  in  its  stead,  with- 
out a  word :  Pharamonde  eyed  him  curiously,  as  though 
he  were  some  natural  phenomenon. 

"  You  are  a  strange  man!  When  you  might  pick  up 
wealth  by  the  handsfull" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         14 7 

"  I  do  not  care  to  soil  ray  fingers,"  he  answered,  curtly, 
as  he  made  a  gesture  of  adieu  to  the  statesman,  and  went 
down  the  steps  of  the  terrace.  He  had  not  been  wholly 
at  ease  in  the  interview:  it  had  galled  him,  and  caused 
him  a  certain  pain.  The  Waif's  pretty  toys  were  pur- 
chased, like  many  another  luxury,  at  the  price  of  a  pang 
to  a  human  heart.  He  loved  the  book  well :  also  in  one 
sense  he  loved  the  man  to  whom  he  had  bartered  it. 

Pharamonde  went  within  and  joined  his  host,  who  was 
standing  in  the  library  of  the  chateau,  turning  over  the 
leaves  of  his  purchase. 

"  You  do  not  understand  Tricotrin,"  said  the  French 
minister.  "  He  is  as  proud,  in  his  own  fashion,  as  you 
can  be  in  yours.  Charity,  patronage,  hospitality  even,  if 
it  be  such  as  he  cannot  return, — pshaw  I  Tricotrin  will 
suffer  them  no  more  than  he  would  suffer  the  lash." 

"  Well — a  good  spirit  that.     But  who  is  he  ?" 

"Tricotrin!" 

"That  is  not  a  name?" 

"It  is  his  name;  and  no  name  since  Mirabeau's  has 
had  more  charm  for  the  people.  He  could  have  been  a 
second  Mirabeau  had  he  cared  to  be  so." 

"And  why  did  he  not  care  ?" 

Pharamonde  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  He  loves  his  liberty ;  and  he  has  no  ambition.  I  have 
seen  much  of  him  at  divers  times  ;  he  has  no  love  for  me, 
but  he  is  a  curious  study.  lie  is  a  ripe  scholar;  he  has 
marvelous  eloquence  when  he  will  ;  he  has  the  genius 
of  command  in  him  if  ever  he  choose  to  exert  it;  and — 
he  never  troubles  himself  to  do  anything  except  to  play 
at  a  peasant's  bridal  feast,  or  a  village  wine-shop's  ca- 
rousal, with  the  talent  of  Paganini  and  Bamboche  !" 

"A  bohemian  !"  said  Est  mere,  with  a  slight  gesture  of 
comprehension  and  disgust.  "He  is  not  the  first  by 
many  who  has  wasted  a  genius  that  might  have  ruled  an 
empire,  in  reigning  over  a  pot-house  revelry  !" 

The  conclusion  was  unjust,  hut  it  pleased  Pharamonde: 
it  was  a  little  revenge  for  the  rebuff  that  the  bohemian 
had  given  him. 

"A  scholar,  you  say?"  continued  Estmere,  still  look- 
ing over  the  Dante.     "Pray  what  were  his  antecedents 


148  TRICOTRIN, 

then:  he  must  have  had  other  domiciles  than  wine- 
shops?" 

"Ah,  that  I  cannot  tell  you,"  said  the  statesman  very 
truthfully.  "  I  do  not  think  there  is  a  living  soul  that 
knows  where  he  came  from.  Antecedents  !  he  would 
not  acknowledge  anything  so  aristocratic.  On  my  honor 
I  think  he  sprang  out  of  the  earth  1" 

"  Full-armed,  I  suppose !"  said  Estmere,  with  a  satiri- 
cal inflection  in  his  voice  that  his  guest  did  not  relish. 
Pharamonde  felt  that  his  English  friend  had  a  polite  con- 
tempt for  both  him  and  his  bohemian. 

He  changed  the  subject,  and  Estmere  put  the  book 
aside  in  a  cabinet. 

It  was  late  in  the  evening  when  Tricotrin  returned  to 
his  Waif;  he  had  been  to  Blois,  which  was  many  miles 
distant,  and  a  full  day's  journey  from  the  little  lonely 
vineyard-shrouded  village  which  lay  hidden  under  green- 
ery by  the  waterside,  like  a  lark's  nest  among  the  grasses. 

Viva  was  sitting  on  the  stone  stile  of  the  doorway, 
with  the  white  cat  Bebe  in  her  lap  :  the  sun  had  gone 
down,  but  there  was  just  ruddy  glow  enough  left  to  warm 
to  rich  hues  her  pretty  drooped  head,  and  the  soft  grace 
of  her  shoulders  and  bosom,  as  she  sat  with  her  arms 
crossed,  inclosing  Bebe  in  their  clasp,  while  the  quick 
heave  of  her  chest  was  shown  by  the  open  square-cut 
bodice  she  wore  : — a  dress  half  like  a  peasant's,  half  like 
an  old  picture,  in  which  the  provincialism  of  grand'mere 
and  the  fantastic  fancy  of  the  child  had  been  blended. 

Something  in  the  shadows,  or  something  in  the  atti- 
tude, made  her  look  less  childlike  and  more  womanlike  to 
Tricotrin  than  she  had  ever  done.  Perhaps  it  might  be 
because  one  man  had  sought  her  as  woman,  not  child,  that 
the  fact  of  her  childhood  having  well-nigh  passed  away 
struck  on  him  for  the  first  time. 

He  paused  a  moment  unseen,  looking  at  her ;  and  for 
the  first  time  also  a  dreaming  conjecture  came  over  him : 
he  thrust  it  away  with  half  a  smile,  half  a  sigh: 

"Pshaw!"  he  thought  to  himself.  "She  is  a  child  to 
me,  though  not  to  that  youth.  What  should  I  get  but 
the  fate  of  Bruno?" 

He  looked  no  longer,  but  softly  approached  her  and 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         149 

dropped  the  packet  he  bore  into  her  lap:  she  started  to 
her  feet,  upsetting  the  luckless  Bebe,  and  gave  a  cry  of 
delight.  As  the  string  of  the  packet  had  broken,  into 
her  hands  had  fallen  the  fac-similes  of  her  lost  bijoux, 
with  something  still  costlier  and  prettier  added;  golden 
toys,  that  glittered  with  rainbow  hues  in  their  gems, 
under  the  namelike  reflections  that  still  came  from  the 
west. 

She  threw  her  arms  about  him  and  thanked  him  with 
all  the  vivacity  and  the  frank  abandonment  of  her  nature: 
— and  he  was  repaid  for  the  sale  of  the  Attavante. 

"Will  they  do  as  well,  little  one?"  he  asked  her. 

'As  well!  A  thousand  times  better!  For  vou  know 
how  dearly  I  love  you,  and — "  she  hesitated  a  moment, 
then  leaned  a  little  nearer  to  him,  with  the  most  charm- 
ing confidential  and  penitent  grace  in  the  world,  "it  was 
very  wrong,  perhaps,  for  he  meant  to  be  kind,  and  he 
begged  me  so  often  to  love  him, — but  I  never  could  care 
for  him  as  much  as  I  wished  to  do.  He  was  only  a 
Prince  Faineant  after  all!" 

Tricotrin's  face  lightened  with  a  brighter  gleam  than 
it  had  worn  all  the  day  through. 

"A  Prince  Faineant, — true!  And  his  offered  crowns 
would  have  been  only  of  brass,  and  very  heavy  on  your 
brows,  if  you  had  worn  them." 

,  "Ah?"  Viva  looked  up  into  his  face  with  a  touch  of 
awe  on  her;  she  had  some  vague  impression  that  some 
evil  of  unknown  magnitude  would  have  befallen  her  if 
she  had  been  enticed  into  following  her  fairy  prince. 
"But — Paris  would  have  been  real,  would  it  not?  1  do 
so  want  to  see  Paris  !" 

"The  heaven  and  the  hell  of  women?  Oh,  child,  you 
are  better  here." 

"But  just  to  sec  it?"  pleaded  Viva.  "Just  to  see 
those  wonderful  summer  Qights  he  told  me  of,  with  the 
streets  like  streams  of  living  lire,  and  the  avenues  all 
glittering  with  lights  like  a  million  of  stars  among  a  mil- 
lion leaves!  As  I  grow  older,  vou  will  take  me  with 
you,  will  you  not? — take  me  with  you  everywhere?" 

A  radiance  shown  in  his  eyes  as  he  looked  down  on  her 
and  laughed. 

13* 

N. 


150  TRTCOTRTN, 

"We  will  see; — when  you  are  older!" 

The  evening  seemed  very  fair  to  him,  as  he  played  her 
favorite  airs  of  Lulli  and  of  Gretry  in  the  moonlit  porch, 
and  the  girl  listened  in  thoughtful  pleasure,  thrown  down 
in  her  young  careless  grace  at  his  feet. 

The  Prince  Faineant  was  well-nigh  forgotten;  and 
Tricotrin  was  repaid  for  the  loss  of  his  long-treasured 
Dante. 


CHAPTER  XIY. 

The  next  day  the  vintage  began. 

All  through  the  grape  country  there  were  mirth  and 
work,  and  rejoicing  and  abundance.  Grapes  on  the  laden 
trailing  bough ;  grapes  on  the  heavy  oxen  wagons ;  grapes 
piled  high  in  the  winepresses  under  the  shade ;  grapes  on 
the  braided  hair  of  girls  where  they  laughed  in  the  sun ; 
grapes  in  the  rosy  hands  of  children  where  they  lay  asleep, 
flushed  with  their  feasting;  grapes  everywhere  in  lavish 
plenty,  fortbe  summer  had  been  splendid,  and  the  harvest 
was  fine  in  due  sequence. 

Tricotrin. loved  the  vintage  month. 

It  had  been  vintage  time  when  he  had  first  come  among 
his  Loirois,  and  laughed  and  danced,  and  been  crowned 
like  a  young  Bacchus  in  the  years  of  his  boyhood.  It  was 
rarely  that  he  was  away  from  central  France  in  the  wine 
season ;  and  the  good  people  averred  that  in  his  presence 
the  harvest  was  always  more  profuse  than  it  was  in  the 
autumns  he  was  absent.  It  was  without  doubt  more  gay ; 
for  they  never  worked  so  joyously,  they  never  danced  so 
heedlessly,  as  when  he  was  among  them.  He  would  work 
himself,  giving  the  wage  that  he  gained  to  the  oldest 
woman  in  the  district,  or  to  some  fatherless  child.  He 
would  make  the  young  girls  laugh  from  sunrise  to  sun- 
set ;  he  would  lighten  the  oxen's  toil  by  bringing  them 
great  cool  juicy  leaves  and  grasses  where  they  stood  in 
the  hot  noonday.    He  would  play  to  the  young  of  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         151 

villages  half  through  the  sultry  starry  nights,  while  their 
feet  flew  to  the  most  intoxicating  dance  melodies  that 
ever  were  heard  even  under  the  skies  of  France.  And 
of  alhthose  whose  labor  he  thus  lightened  with  jest  and 
with  raillery,  and  with  a  sunny  mellow  laughter,  fit  for 
the  lips  of  a  Dionysus,  there  was  not  one  who  was  hap- 
pier than  he. 

From  the  first  years  of  her  remembrance  his  Waif  had 
learned  to  look  for  him  at  the  vine-gatherings.  Wherever 
he  might  wander  during  the  three  other  seasons — and  he 
wandered  very  far  and  wide  with  ceaseless,  restless  pleas- 
ure in  the' mere  sense  of  motion — he  was  almost  certain 
to  enter  France  at  the  late  summer-time,  to  be  among  the 
pleasant  voices  and  the  brown,  bright  eyes  of  the  people 
he  loved  best. 

The  vintage  had  long  been  the  child's  festal  month,  for 
there  were  none  for  leagues  around  her  but  welcomed 
the  stray  thing  whose  history  they  all  knew,  and  who 
was  hallowed  and  endeared  to  them  by  the  fact  that  he 
had  taken  pity  on  her  destitution  and  abandonment. 
Among  the  peasantry  the  singularity  and  mystery  of  the 
child's  appearance  in  their  presence  had  something  of  the 
same  enchantment  that  it  possessed  for  herself.  Nothing 
was  too  wonderful  for  them  to  believe  of  any  creature 
whom  Tricotrin  protected;  and  Viva's  own  views  as  to 
her  elfin  origin  were  not  so  wholly  unshared  by  the 
country  people  as  might  be  imagined  by  those  who  are 
ignorant  of  how  deeply  struck  are  the  roots  of  supersti- 
tion in  the  primitive  places  of  all  countries. 

She  unconsciously  had  fostered  the  impression  by  her 
dainty  tastes,  her  proud  ways,  her  haughty  young  way- 
wardness, to  which  they  cheerfully  submitted  because 
she  belonged  to  Tricotrin  ;  and  Viva  held  an  undisputed 
sovereignty  over  the  whole  riverside,  in  which  her  lair  face 
was  ever  seen.  And  now,  in  the  gladness  and  the  gayety 
of  the  vintage,  she  swiftly  forgol  the  love  passages  of 
her  fairy  prince.  Her  heart  had  not  been  touched,  and 
her  admiration  had  not  been  excited.  She  now  possessed 
as  pretty  things  as  those  he  had  given  her,  and  she  en- 
joyed them  more  because  Bhe  enjoyed  them  openly,  with- 
out the  latent  fear  that  she  was  doing  wrong,  which  had 


152  TRTCOTRIN, 

poisoned  her  pleasure  in  the  young  lord's  gifts.  Beyond 
a  certain  gratification,  unconscious,  but  born  of  the  innate 
coquetry  in  her,  that  she  had  been  the  object  of  such  an 
episode,  little  remained  with  her  of  the  poison  he  had 
sown — nothing  sufficient  to  spoil  her  enjoyment  of  the 
harvest- time,  save  that  she  would  now  and  then  think 
that  to  ride  on  a  bullock-drawn  wagon,  or  to  dance  on  the 
top  of  a  winepress,  was  hardly  amusement  regal  enough 
for  such  a  princess  as  he  had  told  her  that  she  was.  But 
the  amusement  was  too  attractive  to  be  relinquished  for 
that  consideration,  and  she  consoled  herself  by  thinking 
that,  at  any  rate,  he  was  not  there  to  see. 

Tricotrin,  moreover,  was  with  her,  and  Viva,  in  his 
presence,  was  always  her  brightest,  her  gentlest,  her  best; 
she  felt  "good"  with  him,  as  she  never  did  with  any 
other.  He  knew  the  way  to  the  hidden  gold  in  this  ca- 
pricious and  thoughtless  nature — a  way  which  others 
continually  missed. 

Vineyards  lay  all  about  the  old  place  where  she  dwelt, 
on  either  side  of  the  flashing  river,  and  stretching  far  away 
into  the  interior,  broken  here  and  there  by  path  or  road, 
by  wood  or  hamlet,  but  extending  widely  round  on  every 
side,  and  rich,  at  this  period  of  the  vine's  life,  with  the 
fruit  all  ripened  and  glowing  to  purple  or  to  gold.  Viva 
wandered  in  them  in  joyful  idleness  all  the  livelong  day ; 
and  he  himself  asked  no  better  life  than  this  out-of-door 
life,  stripping  the  laden  branches,  laughing  with  the  hand- 
some brown  women,  aiding  the  aged  who  could  not  work 
for  themselves,  and  taking  the  oxen  homeward  through 
the  cool  shaded  bridle-lanes. 

"  The  possessor  of  an  Attavante's  Dante  should  not  be  a 
laborer  in  a  vineyard,"  said  a  slow,  melodious  voice  behind 
him  one  morning  as  he  worked — worked  in  earnest,  for 
he  wanted  a  day's  wage  to  make  up  the  loss  of  a  poor 
old  woman  whose  hen-house  had  been  pillaged  of  all  its 
fowls  in  the  night.. 

Tricotrin  looked  up  and  saw  the  purchaser  of  the 
Dante,  who,  riding  by  a  narrow  pathway  through  the 
vines,  had  checked  his  horse  for  an  instant. 

"Good  day,  Lord  Estmere.  Why  not?"  he  returned. 
"  Another  poet,  Virgil,  loved  the  fields  right  well.     Be- 


TEE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         153 

sides,  'to  be  a  husbandman  is  but  to  retreat  from  the 
citv — from  the  world  as  it  is  man's,  to  the  world  as  it  is 
God's,'" 

Estmere  regarded  him  earnestly.  Here  was  a  French 
bohemian  quoting  Cowley  in  the  purest  English. 

"  You  are  a  scholar  and  a  poet  yourself?"  he  asked. 

Tricotrin  laughed  : 

"  '  Niemand  will  ein  Schuster  seyn 
Jedermann  ein  Dichter.-' 

"  Though  it  may  well  be  doubted  if  he  who  mends  other 
people's  shoes  is  not  of  more  use  than  he  who  only  tink- 
ers his  own  sonnets." 

Estmere's  meditative  eyes  dwelt  on  those  that  the  rich 
Aristophanic  humors,  the  brilliant  Swift-like  irony,  the 
Burgundian  Piron-wit  of  many  nationalities,  seemed  to 
lighten  to  their  Hudibrastic  laughter. 

"You  speak  three  languages  with  equal  purity  of 
accent.  Of  what  country  are  you,  may  I  ask?"  he  said, 
at  length. 

"I  will  speak  twenty  if  you  like;  and  I  am  a  Cosmo- 
politan." 

"A  'citizen  of  the  world 'then.  You  have  traveled 
greatly?" 

"I  have  lived  all  over  the  world,"  said  Tricotrin,  with 
a  shrug  of  his  shoulders;  "it  is  not  big  enough  to  make 
that  much  of  a  boast." 

"And  the  result  of  all  these  experiences  is  to  bring  you 
back  to  a  vine-field?" 

"Well, — Diocletian  went  back  to  a  cabbage  garden. 
A  vine-field  is  more  poetic." 

"But  Diocletian  had  lieen  sated  with  empire?" 

"Well;  and  if  the  result  of  empire  and  satiety  he  to 
conclude  that  these  is  nothing  equal  to  cabbages  for  com- 
fort, is  it  not  better  to  take  the  vegetables  at  first  and 
eschew  the  travail  altogether?" 

Estmere  smiled:  despite  his  prejudices  against  ihe 
class  of  men  to  which  he  believed  Tricotrin  to  belong, 
and  his  dislike  to  anything  that  approached  to  lawless- 
ness or  democratic  sentiment,  he  could  not  help  feeling  a 


154  TRICOTRIN, 

certain  attraction  toward  the  speaker.  His  intuition 
told  him  that  he  addressed  no  common  man,  though'he 
spoke  with  one  working  like  a  day  laborer  among  the 
vines. 

"I  imagine,"  he  answered,  "that  Diocletian's  was  an 
affectation  of  philosophy  and  renunciation  rather  than  a 
genuine  tribute  to  the  charms  of  cabbages.  Moreover, 
talent  is  rare  ;  it  is  always  a  pity  that  it  should  be  wasted 
while  its  possessor  does  hand-work  that  any  boor  could 
equally  well  execute." 

"Pardie!  May  not  talent  be  equally  wasted  in  organ- 
izing wholesale  murders  by  shot  or  steel,  or  wholesale 
political  chicaneries  of  the  people?  yet  those  are  what 
you  statesmen  call  'glory'  and  'state  craft.'  Zoroaster 
says  that  he  who  sows  the  ground  with  diligence  acquires 
more  religious  merit  than  he  who  repeats  ten  thousand 
prayers:  and  I  believe  he  is  right." 

"  That  may  be;  yet  the  sowing  is  only  for  the  body, 
the  meditations  may  well  enrich  the  mind,  or  as  men  call 
it,  the  soul." 

"  That  is  true.  And  a  great  thought  makes  the  world 
richer  than  ten  shipments  of  gold.  But,  believe  me, 
Earl  Eustace,  because  the  hands  labor,  it  does  not  fol- 
low that  the  soul  lies  barren  of  tillage.  Goethe  knew 
what  beautiful  things  the  vines  can  utter ;  he  need  not 
have  heard  those  less  in  working,  than  in  strolling, 
among  them." 

Estmere  looked  at  him  curiously,  and  his  voice  had  a 
certain  haughty  cadence  in  it  that  it  had  lost  in  exchanging 
these  phrases. 

"Why  do  you  change  my  title  thus?"  he  asked.  "It 
is  a  singular  mode  of  addi*ess." 

Tricotrin's  eyes  laughed  with  the  same  ironic  mirth 
that  had  been  in  them  before,  when  he  had  heard  him- 
self arraigned  for  entering  the  rose  gardens. 

"Why  so?  You  are  Earl  Eustace,  are  you  not? 
There  have  been  Earl  John,  and  Earl  Philip,  and  Earl 
Louis,  and  many  more — the  Blind  Earl,  and  the  Mad 
Earl,  and  the  Child  Earl,  and  some  others,  in  the  chron- 
icles of  your  race.  Why  should  not  you  be  distinctive, 
too,  by  your  name?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         155 

"You  know  much  of  my  family?"  asked  Estmere,  in 
more  surprise  than  he  chose  to  display. 

"Oh-he!"  said  Tricotrin,  carelessly.  '"I  know  most 
things;  and  the  Estmeres  are  not  lights  hidden  under  a 
bushel.  Your  people  have  never  loved  obscurity,  beau 
Sire." 

"We  have  done  our  best  not  to  deserve  it,"  said  Est- 
mere, coldly.     "Good  day  to  you." 

He  rode  onward  through  the  vine-fields,  astonished, 
perplexed,  a  little  annoyed  ;  he  did  not  feel  pleasured  by 
the  familiarity  of  this  bohemian,  and  the  off-hand  allu- 
sions to  his  great  race  went  against  all  his  taste,  his 
pride,  and  his  caste ;  and  yet, — the  rnqjj)  interested  him  ! 

And  interest  was  a  thing  to  which  he  was  very  rarely 
stirred. 

Tricotrin  looked  after  him  with  a  shade  of  thoughtful- 
ness  on  his  features ;  then  went  on  again  with  his  work, 
laughing  with  his  next  neighbor,  a  noble  Murillo-like 
woman,  with  all  the  rich  old  Gaulois  blood  in  her  clear 
olive  cheek. 

"That  is  a  very  singular  person — your  friend,  what 
is  he  called,  'Tricotrin?'"  said  Estmere  that  evening 
to  the  French  statesman  Pharamonde.  "A  most  striking- 
looking  man, — the  head  of  a  poet,  a  marvelous  head  for 
beauty  and  power.  What  a  wasted  and  misguided  life 
must  his  be  that  he  should  be  content  thus  with  an  errant 
bohemianism!" 

"Humph  !"  said  Pharamonde,  who  did  not  forgive  the 
wanderer,  being  accredited  to  him  as  his  friend.  "  I  am 
not  sure  he  is  not  the  wisest  man  in  his  generation  :  I 
am  quite  sure  he  is  the  happiest." 

"Is  it  possible  for  a  wise  man  to  be  happy?"  said 
Estmere,  with  a  smile  that  was  not  ironical,  but  weary. 

Some  days  later,  he  and  some  of  his  guests  rode  by 
the  same  route  through  the  vineyards  below  Villiers,  at 
evensong.  It  was  the  close  of  the  vintage,  and  they 
reined  up  and  drew  asitle,  some  four  leagues  from  the 
chateau,  where  they  encountered  tin'  procession  of  Bac- 
chus borne  along,  in  its  relic  of  pagan  worship,  with  all 
the  old  accustomed  honors. 

Patriarchal  as  the  days  of  Palestine,  classic  as  the 


156  TRICOTRIN, 

worship  of  Dionysus,  with  a  thousand  memories  of  old 
Gaul,  and  a  thousand  traces  of  the  cultus  of  Greece  and 
of  Rome,  the  crowning-  feast  of  the  grape-harvest  came. 
The  meek-eyed  oxen,  with  their  horns  wreathed  with 
flowers,  dragged  wagons  that  were  laden  high  with  the 
yellow  and  violet  clusters,  while  before  them,  around 
them,  behind  them,  crowded  the  laughing  throng  of  girls 
and  youths  and  little  children,  reeling  under  the  burden 
of  the  fruit,  shouting  under  their  chaplets  of  late  roses. 
It  was  like  some  Merovingian  or  Carlovingian  triumph, 
when  the  kings  of  Gaul  celebrated  harvest,  or  victory  in 
war;  and  the  pageant  moved  to  the  divinest  vintage  ode 
that  was  ever  breathed  over  the  fruitful  fields  of  France 
— music  mellow  as  wine,  full  of  intoxicating  joy  that  the 
people  caught  in  echoing  chorus,  and  deepening  now  and 
then  into  the  grandeur  of  a  Te  Deum,  as  though  in 
thanksgiving  to  God  who  made  the  earth  increase. 

Involuntarily  the  riders  paused  and  listened  spell- 
bound to  that  harvest  chant.  It  was  played  by  Trico- 
trin  where  he  walked  in  front  of  the  oxen,  in  front  of  the 
foremost  wagon. 

On  that  wagon  all  eyes  turned,  and  in  its  decoration 
all  the  choice  blossoms  and  the  gayest  ribbons  had  been 
employed.  For,  throned  high  among  the  grapes,  with 
a  green  crown  of  vine  leaves  on  her  head,  and  half- cov- 
ered with  autumn  flowers,  sat  Viva — gloriously  happy 
and  triumphant,  the  universally-elected  queen  of  beauty 
and  of  the  grape  festival ;  all  her  love  of  light  and  mirth 
and  music  and  homage  gratified  ;  all  her  childlike  adora- 
tion of  display  fed  to  its  utmost  will. 

Estmere  looked  at  her  as  the  bullocks,  nodding  their 
heads  under  their  garlands,  drew  her  slowly  past  him. 

"What  an  exquisite  face!"  he  murmured.  "That 
child  cannot  belong  to  the  peasantry." 

She  heard  and  looked  clown  from  beneath  her  vine- 
canopy,  a  deep  delight  beaming  in  her  eyes,  an  exultant 
pride  laughing  on  her  lips  ;  then  a  blush  of  shame  re- 
placed the  glow  of  ecstasy,  her  head  drooped  as  if  her 
vine-crown  were  a  circlet  of  lead,  her  pleasure  in  the 
vintage  feast  was  gone  ; — she  had  been  seen  by  a  great 
man  among  the  people  1 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         157 

"  More  poison  for  her  from  them  !"  muttered  Tricotrin, 
as  he  saw  and  heard ;  and  for  an  instant  there  wei*e 
discord  and  a  break  in  the  delicious  melody  he  gave  the 
villagers.  In  another  instant  the  music  broke  forth  again 
in  all  its  silvery  sweetness,  but  to  Viva's  heart  the  har- 
mony was  not  so  easily  restored. 

Estmere  rode  om  unconscious  of  the  evil  that  he  had 
done  ;  and  the  procession  moved  away  along  the  line  of 
the  river,  while  the  glad  tumult  of  the  multitude  echoed 
down  the  evening  air. 

"  What  an  exquisite  face !"  thought  the  earl  once  more ; 
and  he  sighed — a  short,  quick  sigh.  The  fairness  of  wo- 
men had  been  poisoned  to  him. 

"Will  you  not  dance,  Viva  ?"  Tricotrin  asked  her  that 
night,  when  the  vintage  ball  followed  the  vintage  feast 
on  the  green  of  her  little  hamlet,  and  he  played  for  the 
dancers  in  airs  so  bewitching  that  the  stout-built,  white- 
haired  old  priest  could  scarcely  refrain  from  joining  in  the 
rounds  and  measures. 

"No!"  said  Viva  shyly  and  petulantly,  with  the  color 
hot  on  her  cheeks.  She  usually  danced  with  all  the  grace 
of  a  fairy  and  the  abandonment  of  French  blood  ; — 
would  have  so  danced  all  night,  all  by  herself,  if  she  had 
had  the  chance ;  but  this  evening  the  young  boatmen 
and  vintagers  vainly  pressed  and  entreated  her.  She 
was  obstinate  :  she  would  not  join  them — nothing  could 
make  her  ;  and  the  vine-garland  pressed  almost  as  heavily 
on  her  brows  as  real  crowns  on  those  of  real  sovereigns. 
Tricotrin  looked  at  her  earnestly  several  times,  but  he 
let  her  do  as  she  would,  and  did  not  seek  to  persuade 
her. 

When  the  innocent  mirth  of  the  young  and  the  old — 
of  the  lovers  who  danced  on  the  star-lighted  turf,  and  the 
children  who  played  at  their  mothers' knees,  and  the  aged 
who  looked  od  amused,  and  recalling  the  days  of  their 
youth — was  over,  and  the  planets  were  growing  large  in 
the  blue  sultry  skies,  he  approached  her  where  she  sat 
listlessly  under  one  of  the  lime-trees. 

"Viva,  what  ailed  you  to-night .  ?" 

She  lifted  her  head,  and  he  saw  tears  swimming  full 
in  her  eyes. 

14 


158  TRICOTRIN, 

"  He  said  I  could  not  be  of  the  peasantry !  And  I  am 
not ! — yet  I  live  with  them  as  if  I  were,  and  I  have  no 
name  and  no  heritage  !" 

The  words  were  violently  uttered.  As  he  heard  them 
a  look  of  pain  went  over  his  face. 

"  I  have  done  all  I  could  that  you  should  not  feel  your 
loss;  but  that  'all'  is  little,"  he  murmured.  "Why  should 
a  stranger's  idle  speech  move  you  thus?" 

"  Because  he  is  so  great  1  And  I  want  to  be  great  too. 
And  he  saw  me  riding  among  the  villagers — among  the 
common  people  1 — as  if  I  were  some  farm  girl,  some 
dairy  servant  1" 

And  Viva,  a  child  still,  though  something  more  than 
childhood  had  begun  to  wake  in  her,  pulled  the  beautiful 
grape  garland  off  her  hair  and  threw  it  on  the  turf,  and 
stamped  on  it  with  her  feet,  as  .though  it  were  the  badge 
of  ignominy,  servitude,  and  opprobrium. 

Tricotrin  caught  her  arm. 

"  Viva,  Viva,  for  shame  !  The  people  whom  you 
scorn  strove  their  best  to  pleasure  you,  and  the  peasant 
girls  you  despise  yielded  place  to  you  without  jealousy, 
and  wove  you  that  wreath  in  simple  love  and  good  will ; 
and  at  the  first  light  word  from  a  great  man  you  turn 
against  them,  and  are  ungrateful  thus  !" 

The  grave  gentle  rebuke  sunk  into  the  child's  heart ; 
her  chest  heaved  with  a  sob,  her  face  grew  crimson  with 
shame. 

"  I  know !  I  know  it  is  wicked  ;  but  I  cannot  help  it. 
He  thought  I  was  beautiful  ;  he  said  so  ;  and  he  saw  me 
among  all  the  peasantry  ;  he  can  think  me  no  better  than 
they !" 

"  If  you  be  as  good  as  they,  as  single-hearted,  as  pa- 
tient, as  brave  under  burdens — you  will  be  nobler  than 
you  promise  to  be  now!" 

There  was  the  first  scorn  and  the  first  severity  he  had 
ever  shown  to  her  in  the  words. 

Viva's  fiery  spirit  flashed  up  under  the  lash. 

"They  are  good  as  the  mules  are  good !  Just  so  stu- 
pid, just  so  plodding ;  only  content  because  they  know  of 
nothing  better  than  their  yoke,  and  their  pack-saddles, 
and  their  straw-yards  !"  she  cried,  vehemently.     "I  can- 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         159 

not  be  of  them — I  know  I  cannot, — and  that  English  lord 
said  so.  And  if  he  meets  me  again  he  will  never  speak 
to  me  because  he  will  always  remember  me  on  that  grape- 
wagon  !" 

And  her  tears  fell  in  swift  tempestuous  emotion  as 
though  foreboding  some  hour  when  that  memory  would 
rise  up  between  her  and  the  aristocrat  whose  notice  had 
spoilt  all  the  innocent  joy  of  her  vintage-feast. 

Tricotrin  listened  with  his  face  growing  darker  and 
more  impatient. 

"You  are  ungrateful!  Ungrateful  as  a  woman ;  who 
can  say  more  ?"  he  said,  bitterly.  "  Why  has  he  be- 
witched you  ?  He  is  a  cold  man, — he  is  not  even 
young, — he  will  never  think  twice  of  you  1" 

"But  he  looks  so  great!"  cried  Viva,  unconscious  or 
unheeding  of  the  irritated  pain  in  his  voice.  "And  he 
is  beautiful  too,  like  that  Arthur  of  England  you  have 
told  me  the  legends  of,  with  his  blue  grave  eyes  and  his 
air  like  a  king's!" 

Tricotrin  left  her  side  and  paced  to  and  fro  the  grass 
under  the  limes;  he  was  deeply  wounded,  passionately 
angeled;  bul  he  would  show  neither  wound  nor  anger  to 
her.  The  creature  that  was  wholly  dependent  on  him, 
whom,  were  it  his  wish,  he  could  cast  back  destitute  upon 
the  world,  should  never  hear  a  harsh  word  from  him. 

Viva  watched  him  one  moment,  pride  and  rebellion 
still  strong  in  her:  then  all  the  child's  better  nature  con- 
quered them,  she  sprang  to  him  and  wound  her  arms 
about  him  in  caressing  penitence. 

"Oh  forgive  me!  I  was  so  wrong — so  ungrateful.  Do 
pardon  me, — do  smile  at  me.  I  care  for  nothing  else  if 
yon  love  me!" 

He  gently  unloosed  her  arms  from  him. 

"  I  forgive  ;  1  am  not  angered,  only  regretful — for  your 
future  ?" 

"  And  why  for  thai  ?" 

Were  there  ever  young  eyes  thai  saw  clouds  on  the 
Future  Y 

"Because  you  know  you  are  beautiful  and  have  no 
mother;  because  you  are  proud  yel  are  nameless;  lie- 
cause  you  arc  among  the  peasantry  and  pine  for  a  pal- 


160  TRICOTRIN, 

ace ;  because  you  are  divinely  natured  in  much,  but  have 
faults  that  may  make  your  misery  and  your  sin.  Waif 
of  mine !  better  I  fear  that  you  had  died  among  the 
clematis  !" 

The  words  were  infinitely  tender  and  solemn  in  their 
sadness  ;  Viva  was  stilled  and  awed  by  their  grave  sweet- 
ness. 

"  I  know  I  am  wicked,"  she  murmured  at  last.  "  The 
people  were  so  good  to  crown  me  ;  and  you, — oh !  how 
can  I  ever  love  you  enough  ?  But — but — was  it  indeed  so 
wrong  to  be  glad  because  I  had  beauty  in  that  great 
lord's  sight  ?" 

"  Oh  !  true  to  your  sex  !"  cried  Tricotrin,  impatiently. 
"  The  dearest  praise  comes  from  the  highest  lips  !  Estmere 
will  never  think  once  of  you;  why  waste  thought  on  him?" 

"I  cannot  help  it,"  pleaded  Viva,  musingly.  "He 
looks  like  a  monarch  ;  I  do  not  know  what  it  is,  but  his 
face  has  a  charm " 

"  Because  you  know  him  to  be  a  great  man  ! — if  he 
were  a  vintager,  Viva,  you  would  never  glance  twice  at 
him  !  I  would  have  never  believed,  till  I  heard  you  to- 
night, that  the  first  vain  word  that  a  stranger  could  speak 
would  turn  you  against  all  the  friends  of  your  childhood. 
His  one  light  compliment  was  ill  worth  your  poor  vine- 
garland.  Though  your  future  were  to  crown  you  as  it 
crowned  the  slave  Catherine,  and  the  Creole  Josephine, 
you  would  look  wearily  back  from  your  state  as  an  em- 
press to  the  time  Avhen  that  village  chaplet  was  worn  on 
your  innocent  forehead  !" 

Viva's  tears  fell  fast,  in  remorse  and  in  penitence 
now. 

"  My  beautiful  vine-crown  !  I  was  cruel — I  was  mad," 
she  murmured,  brokenly,  as  she  lifted  up  the  wreath  in 
contrite  tenderness,  and  touched  fondly  and  regretfully 
the  drooped  tendrils,  the  faded  leaves,  the  crushed  fresh- 
ness of  the  fair  green  diadem. 

Tricotrin  smiled  mournfully  : 

"  Yes,  you  were  mad  as  those  ever  are  who  yield  to  the 
tempters  of  vanity  and  ambition.  Your  remorse  can  avail 
nothing.  You  cannot  mend  what  you  have  destroyed,  or 
recall  what  you  have  crushed.     The  bloom  will  not  come 


TIIE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         161 

back  to  your  grape-garland,  nor  your  childhood  come  back 
to  you  1" 

Viva  lifted  her  heavy  eyes  to  him  ;  lusterless  and  brim- 
ming still  with  tears,  yet  sweeter  in  their  grief  than  in 
their  radiance. 

"Ah,  I  hate  myself!"  she  whispered.  "I  scorn  my- 
self more  than  you  can  ever  scorn  me  !  I  am  so  happy, 
and  you  are  so  good,  and  all  I  do  is  to  repay  you  with 
wicked  words." 

He  passed  his  hand  gently  over  her  brow : 

"Say  no  more!  All  my  fear  is,  your  future.  The 
world  will  not  forgive  so  easily  as  I.  And  now — talk  no 
longer,  little  one.     Good  night !" 

And  he  left  her,  and  though  the  day  had  been  long 
both  in  mirth  and  in  labor,  walked  away  into  the  dusky 
midnight  rapidly  and  alone. 


CHAPTER  XV 

"Viva,  will  you  come  to  Paris?" 

Ho  spoke  very  quietly  behind  her  the  next  morning 
where  she  stood  feeding  Roi  Dore  and  all  his  feathered 
serail. 

All  the  barley  dropped  down  in  a  heap  to  the  hens 
and  chickens: 

"  To  Paris!" — the  ecstasy  of  her  face  said  the  rest. 

He  smiled,  a  little  sadly. 

"Well,  for  a  few  days.  The  good  woman  Blaze 
McviTt  goes  up  to  see  her  son  in  hospital;  }'ou  can  go 
too  if  grand'mfere  can  spare  you.     Ask  ber  !-1 

The  child  flew  oil' on  her  errand:  Tricotrin looked  after 
her  with  a  musing  doubt  in  his  eyes. 

"It  may  be  for  the  best,"  he  thoughl ;  "here  she  will 
only  dwell  on  the  boy's  memory.  There, — well!  God 
knows  what  will  happen.  It  will  he  a  present  pleasure 
at  least  for  her;  and  a  week  can  do  her  no  harm. " 

14* 


162  TRICOTRIN, 

The  future  was  a  thing  with  which  he  had  never  bur- 
dened himself:  he  concerned  himself  with  the  present.  If 
the  fruit  in  his  hand  were  rich  and  sweet  he  never  trou- 
bled himself  with  fears  as  to  whether  next  year's  orchards 
would  bring  equal  blossom.  It  was  only  now  for  the 
first  time  as  the  Waif  grew  nearer  womanhood  that  the 
question  grew  perplexing  to  him: — for  it  was  the  ques- 
tion now,  not  of  his  future,  but  of  hers.  The  future 
of  a  girl,  nameless,  motherless,  but  for  him  homeless, 
proud  as  though  she  were  the  daughter  of  kings,  and 
passionate  in  her  desire  for  greatness !  What  could  its 
portion  be  except  the  darkness  of  disappointed  desire,  or 
the  false  brilliancy  of  evil  attainment  ?  That  either  should 
become,  hereafter,  the  share  of  the  creature  that  he  loved 
and  sheltered  was  a  cruel  thought  to  him  :  yet  he  could 
not  see  how  to  avert  both. 

While  she  had  been  happy  in  his  country  life ;  while 
she  had  been  a  child  to  find  her  pleasures  in  a  play 
among  new-mown  hay,  in  a  sail  in  a  cumbrous  barge,  in 
a  gift  of  grapes  from  the  vine,  or  of  a  fairy-story  from  a 
peddler's  wallet,  to  make  her  happy  had  been  very  easy. 
Even  now,  if  she  had  clung  by  preference  to  the  fresh- 
ness, simplicity,  and  freedom  of  rural  life  ;  if  like  himself 
all  her  sympathies  and  attachments  had  been  among  the 
people ;  if  she  had  been  satisfied  with  the  warm  and  loyal 
liking  of  the  peasantry  who  had  been  about  her  from  her 
infancy,  and — without  her  vain  desire  for  alien  things, 
for  worlds  which  she  had  never  entered — had  found  con- 
tent in  her  own  heart,  and  in  his  care  of  her,  it  would 
have  been  possible  to  have  carried  into  her  future  years 
the  sunshine  he  had  shed  on  her  early  ones.  But  he 
knew  well  that  an  unfulfilled  aspiration,  a  strangled  am- 
bition, an  ever-struggling,  ever-repressed  longing,  are  as 
poison  to  the  soul  in  which  their  stifled  fire  burns:  he 
knew  that  to  such  a  woman  as  Viva  would  become  such 
poison  is  worse  than  death,  such  fire  is  an  ever-devouring 
flame  of  hell. 

Tricotrin,  who  had  led  so  careless  and  so  rich  a  life  of 
laughter,  meditation,  indolence,  labor,  love,  and  wisdom 
intertwined  to  one  harmonious  whole,  had  never  had  in 
the  whole  course  of.  that  life  a  pain  so  keen,  a  fear  so  in- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         103 

tangible,  as  faced  him  now  in  the  future  of  what,  on  the 
pure  instinct  of  pity,  he  had  rescued  and  succored  with- 
out thought  of  the  burden  it  might  become  to  him  in  an 
after- time. 

It  was  possible  that  some  man  might  behold  her  who 
would  be  won  by  her  beauty  to  lift  her  into  that  blaze  of 
worldly  power  which  she  coveted.  But  he  knew  that  it 
is  not  to  the  foundlings  of  bastardy,  that  love  which  is 
honor  also  is  offered:  and — even  love  with  honor — if  ever 
it  were  given  to  her,  seemed  to  him  a  robber  that  would 
steal  from  him  that  to  which  he  had  the  natural  right. 
A  right  precious  to  him,  though  for  so  long  he  had  only 
thought  of  her  as  a  pet  thing  like  a  spaniel  or  a  bird. 

He  started  as  the  old  woman  approached  him  through 
the  yellow  leaves  of  the  autumnal  gourds. 

"  Is  it  true  the  dear  child  is  to  go  to  Paris  ?"  she 
asked. 

Tricotrin  looked  down  on  her  with  compassionate 
kind  eyes :  he  knew  the  pang  that  it  dealt  to  this  aged 
soul. 

"  Well,  grand'mere,"  he  said  gently.  "  Is  it  not  best  ? 
Only  for  a  week  or  two  ? — and  a  week  or  two  will  chase 
away  this  young  hero  from  her  memories.  Now  he  is 
nothing  to  her: — but  if  she  have  naught  else  to  think  of 
he  will  gather,  from  absence,  beauty  and  stature  not  his 
own.  Tell  me,  does  not  your  experience  of  your  sex  sug- 
gest the  truth  of  that?" 

Grand'mere  sighed,  and  shook  her  white  head. 

"I  dare  say,  Tricotrin; — you  know  in  my  girlhood, 
among  my  people,  if  one  had  a  dream  in  the  head,  or  a 
pang  at  the  heart,  there  was  the  baking,  or  the  washing, 
or  the  beetroot- hoeing,  or  the  grass  carrying,  or  the  cow 
thai  was  sick,  or  the  calf  that  was  hand-reared,  always 
to  occupy  one,  and  thrust  one's  self  out  of  the  way, —  31  e 
you?  With  the  little  darling — it  Is  different  of  course. 
She  lias  nothing  to  do  but  to  dream." 

"And  such  dreams  arc  the  highways  to  sin  1  It  would 
have  been  better, — ten  thousand  times  belter, — if  she  had 
had  the  beetroot-hoeing  and  the  farm-house  cares.  But 
between  us  we  have  spoilt  the  child." 

"  Tricotrin  !     She  is  a  little  born  princess  1" 


164  TRICOTRIN, 

"Born  princesses  without  palaces  ready  for  them 
are  in  a  sorry  plight.  Viva  is  only — vain,  ambitious, 
and  thoroughly  feminine.  Those  qualities,  are  not  con- 
fined to  palaces  " 

"  You  always  jest,"  murmured  grand'mere.  "  But  will 
you  really  take  her  to  that  terrible  city  ?" 

"That  city  is  more  terrible  while  it  is  seen  through 
the  mists  of  her  unsatisfied  longing.  And  she  shall  come 
back  in  a  fortnight,  at  the  farthest." 

The  still  bright  black  eyes  of  the  old  woman  clouded 
with  the  slow  painful  tears  of  age. 

"Come  back?"  she  echoed,  as  she  turned  away. 
"Never  the  same,  Tricotrin,  never  the  same!" 

And  on  her  there  weighed  a  bitter  foreboding : — she  had 
seen  three  fearless  hopeful  young  lives  pass  from  her  into 
that  furnace  of  Paris,  never  again  to  sit  in  the  light  of 
her  lonely  hearth. 

"  Never  the  same  !"  thought  Tricotrin.  "  She  will 
never  be  the  same,  though  she  stay  here  for  year  after 
year.  The  aged  will  never  remember  that  the  youth 
which  they  love  will  escape  from  them, — will  die  out  of 
their  sight  into  its  own  all-absorbed  ego." 

Meantime  the  Waif  herself  grew  wild  with  rapture : 
Paris  suggested  to  her  a  beatitude  that  Paradise  entirely 
failed  to  do.  All  her  elastic  and  vivacious  nature  was 
loosened  to  ecstatic  joy,  in  which  both  her  young  Faust 
and  her  King  Arthur  were  alike  forgotten. 

True,  she  was  going  in  a  manner  very  different  from 
her  ambition :  she  was  going  with  the  homely  wife  of 
the  miller,  whose  mission  was  nothing  more  elevated 
than  to  seek  a  sick  son,  a  private  soldier,  in  hospital: 
she  was  "going  like  a  peasant"  she  thought  wistfully, 
into  that  great  blazing  whirlpool  of  sovereignties  and 
splendors.  But  the  delight  of  it  far  outbalanced  the 
minor  drawback;  and  moreover  her  love  for  Tricotrin 
was  so  much  stronger  than  even  her  ambition  as  yet, 
that  when  she  was  with  him,  no  want  or  wish  remained 
upon  her.  His  influence  was  great  on  her ;  greater  be- 
cause rather  suggested  than  ever  forced ;  and  in  .his 
presence  all  that  was  nobler  in  her  awoke,  all  that  was 
baser  waned. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         165 

Besides,  she  was  but  a  child,  a  child  who  had  seen 
nothing,  and  to  whom  all  the  earth  was  glorious.  Paris 
was  the  golden  land:  once  permitted  entrance  to  it  all 
things  seemed  possible  to  happen  to  her : — even  to  its 
people  finding  in  her  the  daughter  of  the  old  dead  races 
of  the  throne  of  Gaul !  To  be  claimed  and  crowned  in 
Paris  would  not  have  been  too  wonderful  an  apotheosis 
to  her  triumphs, — as  she  dreamed  of  them. 

It  is  said  that  earliest  youth  is  so  happy  because  its 
present  is  sufficient  to  it:  is  it  not  rather  because  the 
future  is  still  an  empire  as  yet  uninherited,  in  whose 
unentered  domain  all  glories  and  all  ecstasies  are  pos- 
sible ? 

It  went  to  her  heart,  warm  though  wayward,  to  give 
pain  to  the  old  woman  she  loved;  to  bid  adieu  to  the 
poultry  and  the  doves,  and  the  pigeons  that  plumed 
themselves  all  day  long  on  the  thatch  of  the  shed,  and 
knew  her  voice  and  their  own  names  so  well ;  to  kiss  the 
white  cat  for  the  last  time,  and  know  that  for  fourteen 
long  days  it  must  miss  her  when  it  mewed  for  its  milk 
and  its  bread.  But  the  joy  of  her  departure  outweighed 
her  regret;  and  though  she  felt  all  that  clinging  to  the 
only  home  she  had  known,  which  every  young  thing 
does  when  it  first  goes  forth  into  its  new  and  separate 
existence,  the  magnificence  of  the  possibilities  that  she 
saw  before  her  in  that  one  word  "Paris,"  stifled  the 
emotion  as  fast  as  it  rose. 

She  went,  with  scarce  a  sigh,  with  scarce  a  backward 
glance,  away  from  the  home  of  her  childhood.  Away — 
for  aught  she  knew — forever. 

The  slow  sail,  miles  down  the  river,  in  the  early  daw  n 
to  the  tending-place  nearest  the  town  whence  the  dili- 
gence started.  The  posting-inn,  with  its  busy  noise  and 
movement,  its  ponderous  gilded  sign  swinging  against 
the  wooden  grape-wreathed  balcony,  its  chatter  of  many 
tongues.  The  dashing  of  the  cumbrous  vehicle  along 
the  sunny  road,  with  the  incessant  flack-crack  of  the 
leathern  whips,  and  the  jingling  chimes  of  the  galloping 
horses1  harness-bells.  The  stoppages  by  picturesque 
wayside  cabarets,  boweivd  in  pear-trees  golden  with 
fruit,  or  chestnuts  full  of  their  spike-armored  nuts,  where 


166  TRICOTRIN, 

the  timbers  were  old  as  the  days  of  crusades,  and  the 
lichens  all  gray  from  six  centuries'  growth. 

The  night's  sleep  in  an  antique  town,  where  a  cathe- 
dral that  was  a  Kyrie  Eleison  in  stone  uprose  in  the 
midst,  with  the  low-peaked  crowded  roofs  lying  far  down 
about  its  feet,  as  the  worlds  lie  around  the  feet  of  God. 
The  next  day's  repetition  of  the  joys  of  the  day  past, 
while  the  varied  scenes  flew  by  like  magic,  and  woods  and 
streams,  hamlets  and  convents,  church  spires  and  river 
bridges,  were  all  left  behind  in  the  sunlight.  The  ap- 
proach to  Paris  in  the  mellow  evening  time,  through  the 
beautiful  broad  road  of  Versailles,  down  the  stony  slopes 
of  Sevres  and  Billancourt,  past  the  noble  wooded  heights 
of  St.  Cloud,  and  so  into  the  city  in  its  gorgeous  night- 
beauty: — all  that  was  tedious  or  irksome  to  others  to  her 
was  one  perpetual  panorama  of  delight. 

Viva  was  in  enchantment. 

In  that  warm,  ruddy,  luscious  autumn,  when  summer 
heats  stretched  over  the  vintage-month,  there  were  high 
festivals  in  the  City  of  the  World.  Even  as  Rome  be- 
fore her,  she,  with  her  vast  proletariate  and  her  vast  ar- 
mies, lulled  the  hungry  cry  of  the  one  with  the  feast  and 
spectacle  in  which  she  celebrated  the  victories  of  the  other. 

There  had  been  war,  and  successful  war.  The  blood 
and  the  treasure  of  the  people  had  been  poured  out  on 
the  African  sands,  and  the  tricolor  had  been  borne  aloft 
over  thousands  of  quivering  bodies.  France  had  con- 
quered, and  was  rapturous  in  pride  :  for  the  vulture  of 
Greed  and  the  skeleton  of  Debt  were  her  trophies,  and 
they  wore  to  her  eyes  the  shapes  of  the  archangels  of 
Patriotism  and  Honor. 

There  was  a  week-long  rejoicing  and  ceasing  from 
labor.  The  dumb  brutes  travailed  in  agony  ;  the  women 
went  down  into  the  depths  of  bestial  vice  to  find  their 
daily  bread ;  the  patriots  and  the  thinkers  were  forced 
into  silence  in  prison  or  in  exile ;  the  future  was 
pawned  to  the  Gold  Devil,  that  he  might  gild  with  its 
happiness  the  present.  But  the  song,  and  the  dance, 
and  the  laugh,  and  the  trumpet  were  all  that  were  heard 
on  the  air. 

In  the  first  of  those  nights,  when  the  populace  was 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         107 

mad  with  delight,  when  the  long  avenues  shone  with  a 
million  of  lights,  when  the  red  white  and  blue  banners 
tossed  in  the  golden  gas-glare,  when  the  wings  of  the  glit- 
tering eagles  glowed  in  the  ruby  torch  flame,  when  the 
air  was  alive  with  wild  melody,  and  music  burst  from 
every  nook  of  the  city— in  the  first  of  these  nights  the 
Waif  first  beheld  Paris. 

She  forgot  all  her  woes  and  all  her  ambitions ;  she 
cared  nothing  whether  she  came  as  princess  or  peasant ; 
she  was  in  a  delirium  of  delight,  a  trance  of  magic — this 
was  the  world  !  Oh,  how  rapturous  a  thing  was  the  mere 
sense  of  living ! — how  endless  a  pageant  the  mere  suc- 
cession of  years  !  So  the  child  thought,  wafted  into  the 
victory-drunk,  flower-crowned  joy  of  the  city,  and  gazing 
over  the  throngs  with  her  eyes  like  two  stars,  and  her 
cheeks  burning  scarlet,  and  the  breathless  laughter  on 
her  happy  parted  lips. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


Lif%  had  no  terrors,  no  darkness,  no  sadness,  no  peril 
in  the  sight  of  Viva ;  it  was  only  one  moving  picture  of 
changeless  color  and  endless  charm.  There  was  nothing 
in  her  of  the  poet's  melancholy,  of  the  visionary's  in- 
stinctive sigh  for  woes  that  are  old  as  the  world,  and 
that  keep  their  cruel  time  with  every  pulse  that  beats. 
Paris  and  she  were  like  one  another — gay,  beautiful,  vol- 
atile, vivacious,  inconstant,  ardent,  glittering  things,  full 
of  fond  enthusiasm,  yet  full  of  fickle  caprice,  always  will- 
ing to  smile,  wvrv  willing  to  weep,  ardent  in  instanta- 
neous worship,  cruel  from  pure  thoughtlessness.  The 
city  caressed  the  child,  the  child  loved  the  city. 

Her  fair  bright  face,  with  its  greal  dark  radiant  eyes, 
and  the  yellow  hair  pushed  back  under  her  little  scarlet 
hood,  drew  every  glance  after  it,  in  the  crowds  of  the 
theaters,  in  the  little  wooden  booths  of  the  fairs,  under 


168  TRICOTRIN, 

the  trees  of  the  public  gardens,  or  beneath  the  lamps  of 
the  boulevards  at  evening.  He  was  with  her,  she  was 
sacred  to  the  people  ;  and  all  the  flowers  and  flags  and 
wreaths  and  toys  that  form  the  current  of  merchandise 
of  such  festal  times  were  rained  upon  her. 

But  that  which  Viva  loved  the  best  was  to  see  the 
throng  in  a  street  turn  by  one  impulse  to  gaze  at  her. 
What  made  her  pulse  throb  highest  was  to  hear  the  men 
who  looked  noble  murmur  after  her,  "Is  it  a  child  or 
woman  ? — what  a  perfect  face  !" 

The  air  was  rife  with  adulation  for  her,  but  it  was  less 
dangerous  than  one  voice  whispering  it  in  solitude  ;  even 
as  poisons  that  neutralize  each  other  injure  less  than  one 
drop  poured  alone.  She  lived  with  the  good  woman 
Mevert,  high  in  a  quaint  old  wooden  house  on  the  border- 
line of  the  Pays  Latin ;  but  she  was  with  Tricotrin  all 
the  day,  and  all  the  long  lustrous  evenings.  She  was 
ecstatically  happy,  and  he  imagined  her  content;  so  she 
was,  because,  wandering  through  the  palaces,  or  watch- 
ing the  grand  people  in  their  carriages,  Viva  already 
mused,  "  I  have  power  because  I  have  beauty.  I  will  be 
great,  too,  some  day." 

He  thought  her  satisfied  with  the  lot  he  gave  her,  as 
she  laughed  on  her  buoyant  way  beside  him ;  she  was 
only  so  because,  without  reasoning  why,  she  felt  she 
should  ere  long  escape  from  it. 

Tricotrin,  for  once,  was  blind,  and  believed  that  wrhich 
he  wished  to  believe.  Living  in  a  poor  little  room  with 
the  miller's  wife,  she  was  happy,  he  believed,  in  the  peo- 
ple's pleasures,  in  the  luxurious  sense  of  young  life,  in 
such  music,  such  mirth,  such  festal  sights  as  he  could 
give  her  by  merely  bringing  her  through  streets  and  gar- 
dens. There  had  been  nothing  inordinate  in  her  desires; 
they  were  gratified  by  such  mere  change  of  place  as 
this.     Why  should  she  not  always  be  happy  thus  ? 

The  man's  own  intellect,  so  richly  stored,  and  his  own 
soul,  so  catholic  in  sympathy,  made  him  contented  in  the 
simplest  form  of  life,  so  long  as  he  had  liberty,  and 
health,  and  the  beauties  of  the  earth.  Forgetful  of  the 
difference  between  a  life  that  draws  its  pleasure  from  the 
mind  within  and  the  life  that  needs  to  have  them  sup- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         169 

plied  by  the  world  without,  he  saw  no  reason  why  she 
should  not  be  happy  thus  also. 

But  Viva  was  dreaming  a  different  dream.  When  she 
had  been  six  nights  in  Paris,  and  three  of  them  had  been 
spent  at  theaters  thrown  open  to  the  public  in  the  Pa- 
risian holiday,  a  new  and  strong  passion  took  posses- 
sion of  her.  It  was  the  passion  for  the  stage.  Nothing 
of  all  she  saw,  save  the  splendid  pomp  in  the  courts  of 
the  Tuileries,  charmed  her  like  the  stage. 

Her  vine-harvest  feast  that  she  had  scorned  was  a 
million  times  more  poetic,  more  picturesque,  more  clas- 
sic, more  full  of  peace,  and  mirth,  and  beauty  than  aught 
she  saw  in  the  theaters.  But  to  the  child,  the  artificial 
brilliancy,  the  mock  sovereignties  of  the  drama  were  far 
more  attractive  ;  partly  because  they  were  novel,  chiefly 
because  they  represented  that  phase  of  life  which  had  a 
fatal  charm  for  her,  and  gained  that  visible  and  public 
applause  which  seemed  to  her  the  choicest  and  the  sweet- 
est of  rewards. 

She  was  all  in  the  wrong.  Her  imagination,  although 
so  fanciful,  was  barbaric,  in  its  passion  for  show  and  for 
triumph;  but  her  nature  had  been  created  thus,  and 
nothing  could  have  eradicated  that  one  evil  instinct 
from  it. 

The  chief  thing  that  enchanted  her  with  the  stage  was 
this :  she  heard  that  actors  and  actresses  were  people 
whose  origin  was  either  totally  obscured  or  confessedly 
very  low ;  she  saw  them  intoxicating  a  multitude,  and 
receiving  a  public  homage  of  whose  real  character  she 
was  wholly  ignorant.  She,  who  began  to  suspect  that 
her  fairy  progenitors  would  never  do  very  much  for  her, 
did  not  see  why  to  her  also  this  goMen  path  should  not 
open.  She  would  glance  at  herself  in  the  mirrors  she 
passed,  and  would  think,  "If  even  I  had  not  genius,  I 
should  have  beauty  1"  ' 

And  her  feminine  instinct  told  her  that  the  latter  was 
the  greater  and  more  potent  influence  of  the  two. 

There  was  one  actress  who  especially  influ<  need  her — 
an  actress  who  looked  almosl  as  young  as  herself  on  the 
stage,  with  a  gay,  innocent  face  like  a  cherub's,  ami  the 
most  graceful  caprices  that  ever  adorned  the  coquettish 

15 


HO  TRICOTRIN, 

parts  that  she  played.  She  was  a  very  great  actress, 
very  famous,  very  full  of  riches,  very  widely  worshiped — 
one  who  ruined  every  fool  that  loved  her  with  a  laugh  as 
light  as  a  lark's  song,  and  who  triumphed  in  the  height 
of  her  reckless  vice  as  a  conqueror  in  the  altitude  of  his 
power.  Of  that  Viva  knew  nothing  whatsoever,  but  she 
heard  the  thunder  of  applause  with  which  the  public 
greeted  her ;  she  saw  the  crowns,  the  wreaths,  the  jew- 
els that  were  flung  in  profusion  at  her ;  she  thought 
nothing  on  earth  could  be  so  glorious  as  to  be  this  en- 
chantress whom  they  called  Coriolis. 

Coriolis's  eyes  —  acute,  swift-seeing  eyes,  though  so 
lambent  and  so  blue  with  their  sunny  laughter — caught 
the  look  of  rapt  adoration  on  the  handsome  young  face 
under  its  scarlet-hood  among  the  close-packed  audience, 
and,  well  used  as  she  was  to  homage,  was  amused  and 
pleased  with  the  child's  rapture  at  her.  She  knew  that 
it  was  the  most  sincere  she  could  have,  and  she  gave 
Yiva  one  night  a  smile  across  the  house  that  made  its 
recipient  as  proud  as  though  an  empress  had  caressed 
her. 

One  day  the  child — wandering  under  the  boulevard 
trees  with  her  old  friend  Mevert,  in  a  morning  when 
Tricotrin  had  not  as  yet  joined  her — was  touched  lightly 
by  the  long  white  wand  of  a  lacquey  glistening  in  gold. 

"  Come  to  the  carriage  ;  Madame  wishes  to  see  you," 
said  the  servant. 

Yiva  turned,  and  saw,  looking  out  at  her,  the  lovely 
cherubic  head  of  her  stage-sovereign.  Viva — restlessly 
uneasy  because  Mere  Mevert  wore  the  quaint  costume 
and  white  cap  of  her  province,  and  she  herself  was  dressed 
half  like  a  gipsy  and  half  like  a  girl  of  the  old  ages — 
went  up  to  the  equipage,  breathless  with  wonder  at  see- 
ing her  cTeity  in  mere  mortal  guise  and  out  in  the  day- 
light. She  felt  giddy,  and  incredulous  of  her  own  fortune. 
Could  it  be  that  this  potentate,  whom  all  Paris  adored, 
would  prove  after  all  Queen  Titania  ? 

Coriolis  leaned  over  the  low  door  of  her  carriage. 

"  Child !  You  are  an  adorer  of  mine,  are  you  not  ? 
Where  did  you  come  from  with  your  picture  of  a  face  ?" 

"  The  Loire,  Madame." 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         l*\\ 

Viva,  for  the  only  time  in  her  life,  was  shy ;  she  was 
absorbed  in  gazing  at  the  matchless  tints  and  graces  of 
her  idol." 

"  Sprung  out  of  the  river  ? — a  second  Venus  !"  laughed 
Coriolis.  "  Do  you  know  what  a  fortune  you  have  in 
your  face,  little  one  ?  Here,  take  these  ;  you  are  young 
enough  still  to  care  for  them." 

She  put  into  Viva's  hand  some  silvered,  painted,  glit- 
tering bonbon  boxes,  that  were  among  the  many  pur- 
chases piled  in  her  elegant  carriage. 

"  Would  you  not  like  to  come  on  the  stage  ?"  she  went 
on,  as  the  child  tried  to  thank  her  as  well  as  she  could  in 
her  amazed  enhancement.  "  You  have  got  it  in  your 
face,  in  your  limbs,  in  your  smile.  It  is  a  fair  life 
enough." 

And  the  actress  laughed.  She — a  lovely,  soulless,  sen- 
sual, airy  thing,  with  a  cherub's  face  and  a  kitten's  folly — 
had  found  it  so.  She  did  not  mean  evil ;  she  meant  kind- 
ness in  her  way,  in  inciting  the  girl  to  follow  her  choice 
of  it. 

Viva  flushed  crimson  to  her  temples. 

"  Oh,  M;n lame !  you  think  that  I  could  ?" 

"Of  course  you  could.  Why  not  ?  With  a  face  like 
yours  you  may  have  no  more  brains  than  a  wooden 
Punch;  )rou  need  act  no  more  than  a  stick;  they  will 
run  after  you.     Look!     You  are  poor,  I  suppose  ?" 

"I  suppose  so,"  assented  Viva,  with  a  burning  sen»e 
of  shame,  and  a  glance  at  Mere  Mevert's  costume. 

"  Of  course- you  are  ;  you  were  among  the  populace. 
Well,  come  to  me  to-morrow,  at  that  address,  and  I  will 
see  what  I  can  do  to  put  you  in  the  way  and  show  you 
to  some  impresarie." 

"  Ah,  Madame  !"  cried  the  child,  rapturously.  "And 
I  shall  have  nil  that  applause  ?  I  shall  have  just  such 
homage  as  yours  ?     I  shall  become  like  you,  shall  I  ?" 

"Become  like  me?  Oh  ycsl"  laughed  Coriolis ;  but 
for  the  moment  a  shade  of  irritation  clouded  her  gay  for- 
get-me-not eyes. 

"If  I  thought  so  I  would  kill  her  where  she  stands." 

Viva  and  the  actress  both  started  at  the  sound  of  the 
voice  near  them.     Tricotrin  had  drawn  near  as  the  Last 


172  TRICOTRIN, 

words  were  uttered.  He  put  one  hand  on  his  Waif's 
shoulder,  and  with  the  other  tossed  the  costly  sweetmeat 
boxes  back  into  the  carriage.  The  eyes  of  Coriolis  glit- 
tered with  astonishment  and  wrath ;  she  was  a  sovereign 
in  her  way,  and  a, pampered  one. 

"  Monsieur  !  who  are  you  that  dare " 

Tricotrin  turned  his  flashing  glance  on  her. 

"A  year  ago  I  saw  Jean  Bruno — a  maniac." 

And  without  another  word  he  forced  Viva  away ; — far 
away  down  under  the  trees  of  the  street. 

She  looked  up  at  him  piteously. 

"  Was  that  wrong  too  ?" 

His  mouth  quivered  with  rage. 

"  My  darling,  my  darling  1  not  wrong  in  you.  Ah, 
God  !  why  cannot  they  let  you  be  ?" 

"  But  you  said  you  would  rather  kill  me  than  let  me 
grow  like  her  ?     What  is  she  ?" 

"  Woe  to  those  who  teach  you  what  sin  means,"  he 
muttered  in  his  beard.  "  Yiva — that  woman  broke  the 
heart  of  an  honest  man.  Would  you  not  rather  die,  in 
poverty  and  obscurity,  than  do  that  ?" 

Viva  hung  her  head  in  silence ;  she  knew  in  her  own 
heart"  that  she  would  not. 

"  But  she  is  so  lovely,"  she  murmured,  "and  such  an 
exquisite  life  she  must  lead ;  and — and — I  do  so  want  to 
be  an  actress  1" 

'What !" — he  moved  from  her  as  if  ho  were  stung ;  he 
seemed  to  see  a  bottomless  abyss  yawn  beneath  the  light- 
dancing  feet  of  the  child  that  he  loved. 

"  I  do  !"  murmured  Viva.  "  All  those  brilliant  nights, 
those  beautiful  dresses,  those  jewels  that  they  toss  her. 
Oh!  I  should  be  so  happy  on  the  stage  !" 

His  face  darkened  with  hot  wrath,  with  bitter  disap- 
pointment ;  he  had  fancied  her  happy  because  she  was 
with  him  1 

"  I  have  said; — I  would  rather  see  you  in  your  grave !" 
he  answered  her. 

"  Why  ?"  asked  Viva,  awed  but  undeterred. 

How  could  he  tell  her  ? 

"  I  thought  you  were  proud,  Viva,"  he  said  bitterly. 

Fine  pride !     To  desire  to  show  yourself  nightly  for 


<< 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         173 

gold !  to  lay  bare  your  beauty  to  the  populace  1  to  be  one 
living  lie  from  the  hue  on  your  cheek  to  the  passions  you 
simulate  1  to  be  a  thing  whose  graces,  and  features,  and 
limbs,  and  laughter,  the  lowest  cur  of  the  people  can 
gaze  at  or  enjoy  if  he  pay  a  few  coins  -to  your  master  ! 
Noble  pride  truly !" 

Viva,  who  had  never  heard  from  him  that  scathing 
irony  of  word  and  tone,  was  rather  terrified  than  con- 
vinced.    Her  head  dropped  ;  she  kept  silence. 

"But  that  exquisite  woman!"  she  whispered  at  last. 
"She  is  happy  ?" 

"  That  exquisite  woman!"  he  echoed,  with  acrid  con- 
tempt. "Happy?  Oh  yes!  Possibly  she  is  happy. 
Without  soul,  without  pity,  without  honor,  as  mindless 
as  any  flower  that  blows  in  the  breeze,  but  a  flower  that 
poisons  all  who  breathe  near  it, — she  is  happy  doubtless, 
because  things  without  conscience  or  brain  cannot  suffer, 
because  gold  makes  the  paradise  of  such  creatures  as 
she!  'Exquisite?'  Pshaw!  have  you  lived  amid  na- 
ture not  to  be  able  to  know  what  is  false  when  you  see 
it?  The  red  of  her  lips,  the  flush  on  her  cheeks,  the 
white  of  her  bosom,  the  tears  and  the  laughter  you  by 
turns  deem  so  divine — they  are  all  lies  !  Lies  like  the 
life  she  has  chosen  to  lead.  Think  of  that  woman's  old 
age,  think  of  her  future ;  child  though  you  be,  cannot  you 
feel  .some  of  their  horror?" 

He  spoke  with  the  more  vehement  bitterness  of  the 
things  he  could  speak  of  to  her,  because  he  could  not 
taint  her  young  mind  by  all  the  truth  of  this  lamia  whom 
she  took  for  an  angel.  It  awed  her,  it  frightened  her  ; 
but  it  utterly  failed  to  convince  her.  The  actress,  and 
the  triumphs  of  the  actress,  had  taken  too  deep  a  root 
into  her  fancy. 

"Ah  !"  said  Tricotrin,  half  fiercely,  half  tenderly,  "you 
prefer  a  painted  lie  to  an  undecked  truth?  That  is  ever 
your  sex's  choice  !" 

lie  walked  on  in  a  silence  which  the  child  did  not 
break  ;  she  was  puzzled  and  keenly  disappointed  ;  he  was 
won  in  led  and  mused  to  hot  wrath  with  this  traitress  who 
must  needs  seek  to  taint  and  allure  what  he  cherished. 

15* 


174  TRICOTRIN, 

Yiva  took  courage  at  last  to  speak,  though  she  felt  the 
only  fear  of  him  that  she  had  ever  known. 

"  But  the  Coriolis  asked  me  to  go  and  see  her  to- 
morrow," she  whispered,  "  at  the  place  on  this  card,  in 
the  day-time,  you  know.     May  I  not  even  do  that  ?" 

Tricotrin  stopped  in  his  rapid  stride,  and  looked 
straight  in  her  uplifted  eyes. 

"  Yes,  Yiva.  Go  if  you  choose.  I  coerce  no  one's 
liberty.  But — I  do  not  share  your  life  with  that  wan- 
ton.    If  you  go  to  Coriolis  you  will  be  dead  to  me." 

The  girl's  head  dropped  again ;  she  was  struck  with 
the  sharpest  terror  her  fair  caressed  life  had  ever  known. 
He  waited  vainly  some  moments  for  answer ;  then  he 
asked  her, — 

"Which  do  you  choose  ?" 

She  lifted  her  face  eagerly,  and  he  saw  her  lashes  all 
wet  with  unshed  tears. 

"  Oh  you,— you  !     What  should  I  do  without  you  ?" 

His  face  cleared  like  a  landscape  from  which  the  sun 
sweeps  away  all  the  storm-mists. 

"That  is  well,"  he  said  simply.  "And  now,— let  us 
go  and  look  for  some  bonbons  as  handsome  as  those  I 
threw  away  from  you  just  now  !" 

Yiva  shook  her  head  with  a  sigh. 

"  I  am  not  a  baby!"  she  said,  impatiently,  and  a  grave 
shadow  was  over  her  face,  that  no  pageant  of  the  streets, 
no  passage  of  the  troops,  no  Polinchinelle  chattering  his 
fun,  no  Dulcamara  vaunting  his  wares  at  beat  of  drum, 
nothing  of  all  the  frolic  and  the  glitter  of  the  holiday-noon 
availed  to  chase  away.  In  the  audaciousness  of  her  su- 
preme ignorance  she  disbelieved  that  this  woman  could 
be  aught  save  what  the  fair  cherubic  face  of  her  avouched ; 
and  she  looked  back  with  passionate  vexed  longing  to 
those  golden  gates  that  he  had  closed  upon  herself— the 
gates  of  an  actress's  career  ! 

She  is  not  the  first,  who,  saved  from  hell,  have  thought 
that  they  lost  heaven. 

"Is  this  all  that  Paris  has  done?"  thought  Tricotrin. 
"  To  exchange  her  young  Faust  for  the  stage  of  Paris  is 
a  poor  mending  of  evils  1" 

His  spirit  chafed  within  him  ;  all  his  happy  philoso- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  175 

phies,  which  loathed  anxiety,  and  sought  mirth  and 
serenity  as  the  essence  of  existence,  were  jarred  and  de- 
throned by  this  feminine  incarnation  of  Caprice  which  he 
harbored. 

He  felt  a  sort  of  despair  before  her  future  ;  he  to  whose 
strong  and  sunny  nature  despair  had  been  unknown. 
Rich  he  could  never  make  her;  give  her  the  life  she 
coveted  he  never  could ;  how  then  could  he  make  her 
content,  or  even  perhaps  keep  her  from  destruction  ?  For 
Tricotrin  knew  her  sex  well ;  and  knew  that  these  pas- 
sionate propulsions,  such  as  hers,  to  wealth,  and  glitter, 
and  luxury,  are  a  hundredfold  more  likely  to  be  the  cause 
of  a  woman's  fall,  than  the  softer  and  more  generous 
emotions  to  which  their  dishonor  is  sentimentally  attrib- 
uted. 

He  had  answered  her  with  a  bitterness  and  a  stern- 
ness wholly  unnatural  to  him,  because  his  powerlessness 
in  this  one  thing  stung  him  so  keenly.  For  one  solution 
only  of  the  problem  rose  before  him.  She  loved  him  with 
a  genuine  ardent  love,  if  it  were  only  the  love  of  a  child ; 
she  had  grown  infinitely  dear  to  him  in  the  past  year — 
her  loveliness  beguiled  his  eyes,  her  grace  bewitched  his 
senses;  and  all  his  heart  and  his  soul  had  kept  so  full  of 
youth  still  through  the  warmth  of  his  sympathies  and 
the  healthfulness  of  his  life,  that  he,  so  young  still  in  all 
the  best  things  of  youth,  forgot  he  was  not  so  in  her  eyes. 
Forgot  it  at  times  when  the  thought  swepl  by  him, — why 
should  it  not  be  possible  for  this  bright  bird  to  find  its 
best-loved  nest  in  his  own  bosom,  there  to  be  safe-harbored 
ever  from  the  beat  of  the  storm-wind  and  the  swoop  of 
the  hawk?  He  never  drew  the  thought  out  into  full  light 
from  the  golden  haze  of  immature  resolve  and  resi  I 
desire  in  which  it  lay;  bul  ii  abode  with  him,  and  grew 
daily  stronger  than  he  knew.  Ii  bad  moved  him  to  the 
vehement  and  caustic  satire  with  which  he  had  retorted 
on  her  allurement  to  the  pollution  of  the  stage: — he  had 
indeed  scorned  the  traitress  of  Bruno,  bul  it  was  as  the 
temptress  of  his  Waif  that  he  abhorred  Goriolis. 

He  had  been  unable  to  foresee,  when  he  took  the  child 
to  the  gay  follies  of  the  gayesl  theater,  that  this  woman, 
whose  triumphs  were   more   than   half   due  to   her  sins, 


176  TRICOTRIN, 

would  exercise  so  instantaneous  and  fatal  a  sorcery  over 
the  mind  of  a  creature  whom  he  would  have  thought  far 
too  proud  to  care  for  the  tinsel  luster  and  the  false  glamour 
of  a  dramatic  career.  To  him,  knowing  the  vain,  cruel, 
criminal,  sensual  life  of  the  lost  wife  of  Bruno,  the  actress 
was  no  more  than  a  marionette  set  in  play  to  provoke  a 
crowd's  laughter:  that  she  could  be,  by  virtue  of  her 
smiling  eyes  and  her  enchanting  grace,  an  angel  in  Viva's 
sight,  was  incomprehensible  to  him.  Long  doubtful 
whether  or  no  to  darken  the  sunny  horizon  of  her  thoughts 
by  the  knowledge  of  evil  and  misery,  he  was  stung  at 
last,  by  her  persistent  regret  for  her  lost  deity,  to  tell  her 
the  story  that  the  Marseillais  sailor  had  told  him.  He 
did  not  show  her  the  guilt  to  which  Bruno's  wife  had  fled, 
but  he  showed  her  the  heartlessness  of  that  flight,  he 
sketched  to  her  the  awful  wreck  of  the  man's  mind,  and 
the  pathetic  fidelity  of  his  wronged  love.  Viva  was  vola- 
tile, careless,  selfish,  though  in  a  soft  bewitching  fashion  : 
he  fancied  almost,  at  times,  that  she  needed  to  be  scourged 
with  pain  to  become,  like  Undine,  a  human  creature  to 
feel. 

She  listened,  where  they  had  stopped  by  a  bench  under 
the  great  Luxembourg  trees,  with  her  eyes  full  of  earnest- 
ness, her  face  full  of  wondering  regret.  It  touched  her, 
this  tragedy — if  it  did  not  penetrate  very  deeply. 

"  The  poor  Bruno  !"  she  said  softly,  with  a  sigh  of  pity: 
she  was  always  pitiful,  when — she  paused  to  see  pity 
was  needed. 

"Well?"  said  Tricotrin  gently,  when  the  tale  had  been 
told.  "Well! — which  are  your  sympathies  with  now, 
your  goddess  Coriolis,  or  the  sailor  whom  she  wronged  and 
forsook?" 

Viva  meditated  wistfully,  her  head  sinking  down  like 
a  flower  with  dew  in  its  bells. 

"Of  course  she  was  cruel — she  was  wrong,"  she  mur- 
mured. "But  then,— how  could  they  be  happy?  He 
was  content  with  the  life,  and  she  was  not!" 

Even  while  the  swift  instinct  of  the  child  fixed  with 
accurate  aim  on  the  one  secret  of  the  misery  of  so  many 
wedded  lives,  she  stabbed,  in  her  innocent  unconscious- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  177 

ness,  to  its  core  the  generous  and  noble  heart  that  gave 
her  such  unrequited  tenderness. 

Tricotrin  rose  quickly  from  their  seat  under  the  chest- 
nut-tree. 

"So!  Discontent  is  pretext  enough  for  disloyalty!"  he 
said  bitterly.  "  Well — what  we  allow  to  nations  we  must 
accord  to  women,  I  suppose  !" 

And  he  took  her  home  in  silence  to  her  little  city-nest, 
high  in  air,  in  the  Pays  Latin. 

She  knew  that  in  some  way  she  had  vexed  him,  but 
she  did  not  seek  to  find  out  why,  with  her  customary  ca- 
ressing penitence :  she,  in  her  turn,  was  aggrieved  because 
her  fair  idol  had  been  cast  down  from  her  altar,  and 
proved  no  longer  of  soilless  ivory  and  of  pure  silver,  but 
of  common  dark-stained  clay.  The  actress  had  brought 
the  first  severance  and  difference  between  them ;  because, 
by  the  lips  of  the  actress  the  voices  of  the  world,  the  voices 
of  sins  that  are  sweet,  had  spoken  to  Viva. 

Meantime,  Circumstance  fashioned  her  fate  as  it  com- 
monly fashions  the  fates  of  all,  let  prescience,  and  sagacity, 
and  skill,  and  care  strive  how  they  may  to  shape  them 
so  1  hat,  no  chance  or  accident  should  ever  have  power  ad- 
versely to  affect  them. 

That  night  Tricotrin's  heart  smote  him  ;  he  thought  he 
had  been  harsh  to  the  "little  one."  lie  rebuked  himself 
for  having  so  roughly  brushed  away  her  happy  ideals; 
fir  having  so  ruthlessly  shown  her  the  corruption  of  wdiat 
looked  to  her  innocent  eyes  so  divine.  He  had  spoken  on 
the  spur  of  an  acute  pain,  and  of  the  fear  that  had  filled 
him  lot  she  should  fall  into  the  pleasure  and  passion-baited 
snares  of  a  courtesan's  career.  He  fancied  he  had  been 
cruel  to  her,  as  he  watched  lier  sitting  in  the  attic  window, 
looking  out  over  the  sunset-tinged  roofs  of  Paris  with  a 
troubled  shade  on  her  face  and  her  hands  lying  listlessly 
in  her  lap. 

Yei — if  she  deemed  him  cruel  because  he  would  not 
launch  heron  that  life,  he  knew  that  .-he  niu-t  continue 
so  to  think  him.  He  would  as  sood — or  sooner — have 
aided  her  to  throw  herself  into  the  black  Seine,  flowing 
3  onder  under  the  old  walls  of  the  Palace  of  Justice. 

He  went  up  to  her  and  laid  his  hand  on  her  shoulder. 


178  TRICOTRIN, 

"Well,  Viva! — what  good  was  it  for  you  to  set  your 
heart  on  roaming  with  me,  if  the  first  yellow-haired  woman 
you  meet  makes  you  dissatisfied  thus?" 

" It  is  not  that,"  the  girl  answered  slowly.    "It  is " 

"It  is  what?" 

"  Well — I  was  thinking  if  one  would  be  like  her  through 
being  wicked,  it  must  be  very  hard  work  to  keep  good!" 

Tricotrin  smiled,  a  little  sadly. 

" You  have  found  out  that  common-place?  I  do  not 
dispute  it.  Evil  thrives ;  and  honor  will  not  be  wooed 
because  she  brings  plenteousness.  It  is  just  this  which 
corrupts  the  world,  Viva, — evil  pays  well,  honor  will  not 
be  followed  by  mercenaries." 

She  gave  a  deep  sigh. 

"But  she  looks  so  happy?" — the  question  could  not  be 
general  to  her,  she  argued  only  from  the  personality. 

"Happy!  As  a  mollusc  is  happy  so  long  as  the  sea 
sweeps  prey  into  its  jaws ;  what  does  the  mollusc  care 
how  many  lives  have  been  shipwrecked  so  long  as  the 
tide  wafts  its  worms  ?  She  has  killed  her  conscience,  Viva; 
there  is  no  murder  more  awful.  It  is  to  slay  what  touch 
of  God  we  have  in  us  !" 

Viva  was  awed,  and  was  silent. 

"Why  does  God  let  such  things  live  then?"  she  asked, 
at  the  last. 

"Ah,  child!  Why  does  God  let  the  dumb  beasts  be 
born  only  to  perish  after  lives  of  long  torture  ?  The 
marvel  of  creation  is  one  we  shall  never  solve  on  earth. 
But  come!  Those  problems  are  too  deep  for  your  age. 
Let  us  go  and  see  the  last  fireworks!" 

The  fireworks  made  her  a  child  again ;  they  were  the 
end  and  crown  of  the  long  week  of  festivity,  and  they  fell 
in  golden  showers  and  leapt  in  fires  of  every  hue,  till  they 
were  seen  by  those  far  away  on  the  distant  terraces  of 
Saint-Germain. 

The  young  uplifted  head,  with  that  glow  and  conflict 
of  color  reflected  on  it,  as  the  sparkling  rain  of  flame 
sprang  upward  and  descended  from  the  summit  of  the 
Arch,  attracted  many  a  glance  near  her  far  more  than 
did  the  fire-play.  With  the  lofty  stature  and  the  leonine 
head  of  Tricotrin  behind  her,  as  he  guarded  her  from  the 


TITE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         179 

pressure  of  the  crowds,  she  was  a  picture; — even  to  the 
picture-sated  eyes  of  worn  Parisians. 

Among  those  who  thus  saw  her  were  two  whose  gaze 
never  left  her  face,  so  unconscious  of  their  study  of  it,  as 
her  eyes  followed  the  gay  magnificence  of  the  fireworks' 
display. 

One  of  them  was  a  man  jammed  in  the  dense  press, 
into  which  he  had  accidentally  been  entangled — the  man 
to  whom  Tricotrin  had  given  his  "  chance."  And  he  read 
her  face  with  a  hard  eager  intentness,  as  one  who  reads 
the  lines  of  a  book  that  he  must  commit  to  memory  and 
use  at  need. 

The  other  was  a  person  looking  wearily  out  from  where 
his  carriage  was  blocked,  in  a  by-street,  refused  entrance 
into  the  Champs  Elysees  that  was  consecrated  to  foot 
passengers.  He  was  an  invalid,  a  scholar,  a  nobleman, 
a  recluse  of  middle  age ;  and  the  face  of  the  girl  with  its 
brilliant  tint,  its  careless  happiness,  its  marvelous  perfec- 
tion of  beauty,  youth,  and  health,  stirred  him  to  a  strong 
emotion,  half  pain,  half  pleasure. 

The  carriage  was  close  to  the  corner  of  the  street;  its 
object  had  been  to  cross  the  road,  but  the  mounted  gen- 
darmes had  interposed.     Tricotrin  was  scarcely  a  3 
from  it;    its  occupant  leaned  slightly  forward  and  spoke 
to  him. 

"Tricotrin!  Let  your  young  companion  come  hither; 
she  is  not  safe  in  that  throng." 

Tricotrin  looked  round,  and  smiled. 

"Thank  you; — you  are  very  kind." 

The  offer  had  been  frankly  made;  he  accepted  it  as 
frankly,  knowing  well  the  speaker.  Viva  was  lifted  in 
an  instant  upon  the  seat  of  the  equipage  ;  and,  ;i>  she 
thought  to  herself,  if  she  had  only  not  had  thai  scarlet 
cloak  on,  with  its  hood  half  over  her  curls,  who  could  have 
known  she  was  not  a  young  duchess?  Her  vexation 
about  the  cloak  slightly  spoiled  her  pleasure  in  the  fire- 
works; she  had  not  thought  of  ii  on  foot,  bul  in  a  car- 
riage'— it  was  so  different.  She  would  nol  have  been 
much  consoled  it'  she  had  known  how  exquisitely  pic- 
turesque that  costume  made  her  look.     Viva,  like  many 


180  TRICOTRIN, 

of  her  sex,  well  as  she  loved  her  loveliness,  would  rather 
have  looked  greater  than  have  looked  beautiful. 

She  was  occupied,  too,  in  glancing  at  the  owner  of  the 
vehicle ;  he  was  worn,  pale,  attenuated,  plain  of  feature, 
though  his  countenance  was  one  of  great  intelligence ;  he 
did  not  at  all  look  like  the  knight-errant  who  was  to  take 
a  dispossessed  princess  back  to  her  rightful  heritage,  but 
he  had  an  attraction  for  her  because  he  was  visibly  of 
some  high  rank  by  his  attendants,  and  because  his  weary 
melancholy  eyes  dwelt  on  her  with  so  unmistakable  an 
admiration. 

She  talked  to  him,  in  answer  to  his  questions,  with  vi- 
vacious volubility;  she  was  happy,  elated,  excited,  and 
had  an  intense  enjoyment  in  being  so  prominent  in  that 
grand  carriage — an  enjoyment  only  damped  by  the  hap- 
less scarlet  cloak. 

Tricotrin  leaned  against  the  door,  and  listened  to  her 
mirthful  chatter — in  silence. 

"May  I  not  drive  you  home?"  asked  the  owner  of  the 
carriage,  when  the  last  of  the  fire-show  was  over.  Trico- 
trin lifted  the  girl  down  on  to  the  ground. 

"No — those  born  to  walk  had  best  not  learn  the  ease 
of  equipages.  Many  thanks  for  your  kindness  and  your 
courtesies." 

The  Due  de  Lira  smiled  wearily. 

"That  man  is  a  character,"  he  thought,  as  Estmere 
had  done  before  him;  "and  the  child — the  child  is  like 
a  summer-day  in  one's  youth." 

The  next  afternoon  the  same  elegant  equipage  entered 
the  Pays  Latin,  and  its  master  ascended  the  five  flights 
of  rickety  stairs  to  the  chamber  where  Viva,  after  a  long 
morning  out  of  doors,  sat  on  the  boarded  floor,  cracking 
nuts,  and  tossing  them  uncracked  to  her  old  friend  Misti- 
gri,  singing  to  herself  a  gay  opera  air  of  llicci's,  caught 
up  from  the  streets.  Mere  Mevert  was  with  her  sick 
son;  Tricotrin,  on  a  smooth-planed  plank  of  deal,  was 
painting  with  that  rare  happy  skill  he  possessed,  smoking 
the  while,  and  thrusting  out  of  sight  for  the  moment  that 
vexed  question,  "what  would  become  of  her?" 

He  rose,  and  welcomed  the  new  comer  cordially,  though 
with  surprise.     Viva  dropped  her  nuts,  and  sprang  to 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAFF  AND  STRAY.         181 

her  feet — to  be  caught  sitting  on  the  floor  was  worse  than 
to  have  been  seen  in  a  scarlet  cloak!  Bat,  his  carriage 
apart, -this  stranger  had  so  little  of  grandeur  about  him, 
was  so  grave,  so  unassuming,  so  dumb,  as  it  were,  before 
the  dauntlessness  and  the  pretty  insolence  of  her  own  air, 
that  Viva  concluded  he  could  have  been  nobody  very 
great,  after  all,  and  heeded  his  presence  but  little. 

Tricotrin,  on  the  contrary,  treated  him  with  a  regard 
he  rarely  showed  to  men  of  rank ;  he  knew  the  worth  of 
character  when  he  met  it,  and  this  character  was  of  pure 
gold. 

Years  before,  in  the  wild,  hot  days  of  a  midsummer 
revolution,  he  had  seen  it  tested.  The  mob  had  thundered 
at  the  gates  of  a  great  hotel,  and  forced  the  bronze  and 
brazen  scroll-work  in.  On- to  the  flight  of  steps  that  led 
to  the  entrance-door,  when  the  court  was  filled  with  seeth- 
ing human  life,  there  had  come  one  weak  and  slender  form, 
inspired  with  all  the  fire  and  the  dignity  of  a  great  race 
in  that  one  moment.  The  sickly  and  suffering  Due  de 
Lira  had  looked  quietly  down  on  the  infuriated  people 
with  a  look  half  contempt  and  half  compassion.  "You 
intend  to  pass  my  threshold  ?"  he  had  said.  "  Very  well. 
But  it  will  be  over  my  dead  body.     Now — advance  1" 

And  Tricotrin,  whose  pulse  never  beat  so  high  as  un- 
der the  wine-draught  of  revolution,  and  whose  voice  the 
insurgents  followed  as  chargers  the  trumpet-call,  hearing 
that  quiet  and  gallant  defiance,  had  turned  on  his  own 
people,  and  forced  them  back  at  risk  of  his  own  life  and 
limb,  and  scourged  them  with  fiery  words  as  pillagers 
and  thieves. 

The  nobleman  and  the  revolutionist  had  rarely  crossed 
each  other's  paths  since  then.  The  career  of  the  ailing, 
learned,  secluded  gentleman,  and  that  of  the  adventurous, 
erratic,  sanny-tempered  hohemian,  could  have  few  points 
of  meeting;  Imt  there  had  been  ever  since  esteem  between 
them,  though  the  enormous  divergence  of  their  lives  kepi 
them  far  asunder. 

Tin-  Due  de  Lira — last  of  a  mighty  race — oftentimes 
envied  with  a  sigh  the  Buperb  health,  the  careless  joyous- 
ness,  the  liberty,  and  the  wanderings  of  the  man  who 

16 


182  TRICOTRIN, 

owned  naught  but  his  Mistigri  and  his  Straduarius.  He 
himself  had  been  delicate  of  frame  from  his  birth  upward ; 
and — for  this  solitary  representative  of  his  old  legitimate 
line — there  was  but  one  creed,  one  king,  one  flag,  possi- 
ble ;  and  he  had  no  place  nor  part  in  the  France  of  the 
present.  Lonely  are  the  men  who  are  before  their  own 
time ;  but  doubly  isolated  are  the  men  who  are  behind  it. 

Restrained  by  a  fancied  honor  from  departing  ever  from 
the  political  traditions  of  his  house,  he  spent  his  years  in 
charity,  in  study,  in  travel,  mingling  little  in  the  pleasures 
of  his  rank,  not  at  all  in  their  ambitions.  He  had  never 
married;  he  had  shunned  the  society  of  women ;  he  was 
of  a  nervous  and  sensitive  temperament,  and  now,  even 
the  presence  of  the  gay  and  haughty  child — foundling 
though  she  was — kept  the  great  nobleman  almost  silent 
and  almost  embarrassed.  For  so  long  a  period  he  had 
never  heeded  the  fairness  of  woman;  her  beauty,  her 
youth,  her  pretty  audacities  were  like  some  startling  rev- 
elation to  him  of  all  that  he  had  missed  and  lost. 

He  stayed  an  hour  or  more,  watching  the  progress 
of  the  painting,  talking  with  Tricotrin  as  scholar  _with 
scholar,  glancing  always  at  the  child.  Her  history  he 
learned  in  a  few  words;  and  he  wondered  to  himself  what 
lordly  or  princely  stock  had  given  to  this  nameless  Waif 
her  royal  air  and  her  imperial  grace.  He  offered  her 
many  pleasures ;  among  them  he  invited  her  to  go  and 
see  his  house,  a  palace  rilled  with  the  treasures  of  art  that 
Tricotrin  had  saved  from  the  mob's  destruction.  But 
Tricotrin  gently  declined  all  his  proposals ;  he  followed 
his  visitor  out  down  the  staircase,  and  spoke  what  he 
would  not  speak  before  Viva. 

"  See  here,  M.  de  Lira,"  he  said,  as  they  stood  in  the 
doorway.  "You  have  just  heard  the  little  one's  history. 
I  have  no  riches ;  she  can  have  none.  What  avail  to  give 
her  tastes  that  cannot  be  gratified,  desires  that  can  only 
be  wormwood  ?  I  let  you  come  near  her  because  you  are 
a  man  of  pure  honor — she  is  safe  with  you ;  but  I  would 
scarce  do  so  with  any  one  else.  Viva  is  a  foundling  ;  Viva 
must  be  of  the  people.  She  is  ready  enough  now  to  rebel 
at  her  lot ;  ready  enough  in  her  innocence  to  throw  her- 
self into  misery,  if  the  misery  have  gilded  gates  that  she 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         183 

fancies  arc  the  portals  of  power.  We  must  teach  her 
content  as  best  we  can,  or  her  future  will  be  one  of  abso- 
lute wretchedness — if  not  of  disgrace.  I  know  well  that 
you  would  be  the  last  to  push  her  one  step  nearer  that; 
so, — understand  my  sole  motive  when  I  say,  'be  merci- 
ful to  the  child,  and  do  not  suggest  to  her  brilliancies  she 
can  never  justly  enjoy.'" 

The  Due  de  Lira  listened  and  bent  his  head. 

"God  forbid  she  should  be  harmed;  but — such  a  creat- 
ure as  that — Tricotrin,  believe  me  it  will  not  be  possible 
to  teach  her  contentment  in  poverty." 

Tricotrin 's  eyes  darkened  with  impatience. 

"I  saved  her  life  for  wretchedness  then,  or  for  shame. 
How  can  riches  come  with  honor  to  a  nameless,  owner- 
less thing?  You  forget;  men  have  hard  enough  work 
to  emerge  from  the  prejudices  of  your  legitimate  world, 
women  are  crushed  to  pieces  under  them!" 

"That  is  true," said  the  nobleman,  simply,  and  he  went 
away  without  more  words. 

Tricotrin  stood  looking  out  down  the  narrow  street, 
with. its  peaked  root's,  and  the  sunset  glimmering  ruddily 
in  the  easeinent-<Hass.  A  band  of  blue-bloused  workmen 
were  coming  along  it  singing  cheerily;  some  boy-painters 
were  laughing  ami  talking  over  their  thin  red  wine  in  the 
little  cabaret  opposite;  in  a  window  high  above  sat  a 
pretty  black-eyed  girl  stitching  away  at  the  rose-colored 
skirt  in  which  she  would  dance  at  a  barriere  ball  that 
night:  it  was  all  of  the  "people,"  but  it  was  all  bright 
ami  contented. 

He  crushed,  ere  they  rose,  both  a  sigh  and  an  oath. 

Ninety-nine  oul  <>f  a  hundred  would  have  been  happy 
in  Viva's  place:  why  must  she  alone  have  this  restless, 
ambit  ions,  incessantly-aspiring,  unconsciously-disdainful 
nature,  which  made  her  so  ill  at  ease,  so  petulant  ly  impa- 
tient of  the  life  into  which  accidenl  had  thrown  her? 

Was  it  the  irrepressible  natural  instincl  of  some  pa- 
trician blood  in  her  that  thus  Worked  in  her  soul  and 
corroded  her  present  peace  by  it>  desire  for  unattainable 
power?  It  mighl  he: — who  could  tell  whence  she  came, 
this  child  who  thought  herself  born  from  the  fairies?  V>-* 
that  as  it  might,  it  was  true  that  she  would  never  be  Bat- 


184  TRICOTRIN, 

isfied  as  she  was.     And  his  heart  was  heavy  within  him, 
for  his  love  for  her  grew  very  great. 

After  a  while  he  turned  and  went  within  ;  he  ascended 
the  stairs  and  called  to  her:  she  came  thrusting  her  head 
out  of  the  gloom  like  some  Old  Master's  Angel  out  of  a 
background  of  bistre  shadow. 

"My  child,  he  said  gently,  "you  have  seen  some  of 
the  sights  of  Paris;  but  there  are  some  still  that  you  have 
not.     Come  and  look  at  those  now." 

She  came:  he  was  more  silent  than  his  wont,  and  she 
wondered  where  he  was  going.  He  did  not  tell  her ;  but 
he  went  first  to  a  building,  where  within  the  entrance-way 
was  a  little  iron  cradle  that  swung  on  a  pivot:  just  placed 
in  it  was  a  year-old  child,  naked  and  crying  piteously; 
the  cradle  was  just  turning  for  the  infant  to  be  taken 
within.  "  That  boy  is  a  foundling,  as  you  were,  my 
Waif,"  he  said  softly. 

Some  streets  farther  on  he  paused  again;  a  group  of 
young  students  were  reading  what  was  written  on  the 
door  of  a  hospital.  "They  are  looking  what  operations 
take  place  to-morrow,"  he  said,  in  the  same  tone.  "  There 
are  six:  six  lives  then  that  will  suffer  the  torment  of  the 
knife,  suffer  it  that  they  may  still  drag  on  existence,  sweet 
to  them,  though  they  are  poor  and  of  no  account." 

Viva  did  not  answer;  the  unusual  seriousness  of  his 
voice  awed  and  stilled  her.  He  led  her  next  to  a  long 
low  shed  around  which  a  silent  crowd  was  pressing. 

"A  dead  body  lies  in  there,"  he  said  to  her.  "A  young 
girl  not  much  older  than  you;  who  drowned  herself  last 
night  in  the  Mare  d'Auteuil.  People  have  come  all  day 
to  see  if  they  could  recognize  her ;  no  one  has  done  so 
yet.     There  are  lives  that  are  quite  lonely  upon  earth." 

The  child's  face  was  grave  and  pale ;  she  still  answered 
nothing,  but  he  heard  her  breath  come  and  go  quickly. 
He  passed  onward  to  a  great  dark  melancholy  pile,  where 
the  high  casements  were  barred  with  iron  :  he  motioned 
to  her  to  look  up  at  it. 

"  That  is  a  madhouse  for  the  poor.  Among  them  is  an 
actress,  once  as  brilliant  as  your  Coriolis.  Can  you  guess 
what  made  her  a  maniac  ?  she  had  an  accident  that  spoiled 
her  beauty,  and  when  she  first  appeared  after  it  the  cruel 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         185 

people  hissed  as  loudly  as  they  had  adored  her.  She 
stood  a  moment  under  the  storm  of  execration,  then  burst 
into  frantic  laughter.  Her  brain  was  gone  from  that 
night.  "  She  had  been  extravagant  and  vicious.  Such  wo- 
men have  many  lovers  and  no  friends.  There  was  only 
the  public  asylum  for  her.  Yet  Coriolis  now  is  not  so 
great  as  this  maniac  once  was." 

Still,  Viva  said  not  a  word:  but  her  hands  twined  on 
his  arm,  and  clung  there  closely  in  the  fading  evening 
light.  He  led  her  onward  in  silence  through  dark,  crooked, 
wretched  streets  that  she  had  never  dreamed  of;  she  had 
seen  the  Paris  of  pleasure,  the  Paris  that  was  full  of  light, 
of  wealth,  of  merciless  gayety,  of  boundless  recklessness; 
this  was  the  Paris  of  crime,  of  misery,  of  famine. 

Fetid  odors  met  her  like  the  blasts  of  poisonous  fur- 
naces; hideous  outcries  filled  the  air;  ghastly  shapes  flit- 
ted through  the  gloom,  of  raving  women  and  oi  starving 
men,  and  of  creatures  all  unsexed  by  drink  or  guilt,  who 
had  nor  womanhood  nor  manhood  left:  standing  at  the 
entrance  of  that  Gehenna,  where  the  love  of  that  brutal- 
ized populace  made  him  sacred,  he  felt  the  child,  brave 
though  she  was,  trembling  through  all  her  delicate  limbs. 
He  passed  his  arm  around  her. 

"  Viva,  look  well.  Take  that  picture  with  you  on  your 
memory.  This  is  how  the  mass  of  human  lives  in  every 
city  lives;  they  who  of  their  own  will  sink  to  it  may 
merit  their  hell,  but  thousands  on  thousands  are  born  in 
such  a  pit  of  crime,  of  infamy,  of  agony  as  this,  breathing 
its  poisons  as  their  first  and  only  breath  of  life — and  then 
the  world  can  wonder  that  it  reeks  with  sin  !" 

She  shuddered,  and  clung  closer  to  him,  and  hid  her 
face  upon  his  breast. 

"  Take  me  away !  Oh,  take  me  away!"  she  whispered. 
"How  wicked  I  was  to  ever  complain  or  repine  !" 

He  led  ber  borne  in  the  samesilence;  and  up  the  stairs 
to  where  a  wood  lire  burned  cheerily  in  t  be  little  chamber: 

in  its   light    he  saw  that    she  was  very  pale,  her  hair  was 

heavy  with  night  dew,  her  limbs  shook  still.     Be  drew 
her  to  the  warmth,  and  looked  down  in  her  eyes. 

"  Have  1  been  cruel,  my  child?  Your  fever  of  discon- 
tent needed  a  sharp  cure.     Life  lies  before  you,  Viva,  and 

16* 


186  TRIG0TR1N, 

you  alone  can  mould  it  for  yourself.  Sin  and  anguish 
fill  nine-tenths  of  the  world:  to  one  soul  that  basks  in 
light  a  thousand  perish  in  darkness ;  I  dare  not  let  you 
go  on  longer  in  your  dangerous  belief  that  the  world  is 
one  wide  paradise,  and  that  the  highroad  of  its  joys  is 
the  path  of  reckless  selfishness.  Can  you  not  think  that 
there  are  lots  worse  than  that  of  a  guiltless  child  who  is 
well-loved  and  well-guarded,  and  has  all  her  future  still 
before  her?" 

Ere  his  words  were  done  she  had  thrown  herself  into 
his  arms,  in  an  abandonment  of  emotion, — the  loosened 
tide  of  all  her  pent-up  wonder,  grief,  and  fear.  It  was  the 
terror  of  every  young  life  that  sees  for  the  first  time  the 
hopeless  and  unnumbered  miseries  that  fill  the  world. 

"  Oh !  how  wicked  I  was  !"  she  murmured,  again  lifting 
her  tear-laden  eyes  to  the  face  that  ever  for  her  had  the 
compassion  and  benignity  of  a  god.  "  I — who  am  so 
happy  I     I — who  have  you  to  care  for  me!" 

A  beautiful  light  shone  in  his  own  gaze  as  it  dwelt  on 
her ;  he  answered  nothing  in  words,  but  he  stooped  his 
head  and  kissed  her.  To  her  it  was  only  the  old  familiar 
tenderness  &  pardon  and  of  sympathy;  but  for  him  it  had 
a  new  sweetness — the  sweetness  of  a  new  love. 

As  children  dream  by  firelight,  so  he  dreamt  too  in  the 
warmth  of  the  burning  logs. 

Her  love  for  him  was  deep  and  true ;  the  unrest  of  her 
very  early  youth  would  pass  away ;  her  fanciful  desires 
were  the  caprices  of  an  imaginative  and  but  half-dawned 
intelligence ;  was  it  not  possible  that  his  pity  on  her  when 
she  had  been  naught  to  him  might  be  rewarded  now  that 
she  had  grown  dear  to  him? 

Feminine  natures  were  things  so  mutable ;  the  fanciful 
ambitions  of  women  faded  so  often  and  so  happily  in  the 
dawn  of  their  affections  ; — could  she  not  find  her  pleasure 
as  he  did,  in  wandering  over  fresh  lands,  keeping  ever  in 
eternal  summer  ? — could  she  not,  as  others  of  her  sex  had 
done,  forget  the  desires  of  pomp  and  of  power,  in  the 
sunny  eyes  and  the  murmuring  lips  of  offspring  that 
should  spring  up  in  her  youth,  like  the  white  blossoms 
that  encircle  the  scarce-opened  blush-flower? 

It  was  only  a  dream ;  but  dreams,  only,  are  fair, — till 
the  dreamer  awakes. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         187 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

The  dream  remained  with  him  all  the  following  day; 
a  day  spent  at  Great  and  Little  Trianon,  where  every 
graceful  tree  that  grew  tall  and  beautiful  above  the  mossy 
sward,  and  every  water-bird  that  splashed  and  floated  in 
the  weed-choked  pools,  whispered  to  Viva's  fancy  some 
mournful  warning  of  the  instability  of  power.  She  was 
in  the  mood  to  listen  to  the  warning.  The  Trianon  made 
her  very  thoughtful;  she  did  not  know  much  history,  but 
she  knew  that  one  history  which  looks  from  the  blue  eyes 
of  the  portrait  on  the  wall,  and  speaks  in  the  yellow  leaves 
of  the  old  music,  and  steals  down  the  gentle  winds  that 
stir  the  same  boughs  which  once  screened  sun  and  heat 
from  the  white  Austrian  brow. 

It  made  her  thoughtful;  but  she  was  very  happy  h'ing 
under  the  odorous  pines,  and  listening  to  Tricotrin's 
Stories  of  that  old  dead  time. 

The  thoughtfulness  passed;  the  happiness  remained 
when  she' was  back  again  in  the  Pays  Latin,  in  the  little 
high  cosy  chamber,  watching  the  simmering  of  a  wonder- 
ful sweet  soup  she  had  concocted  in  Spanish  fashion,  after 
his  directions,  of  potatoes,  and  wine,  and  fruit,  and  spices, 
bubbling  altogether  in  a  brazen  jar. 

"Shall  we  go  to  the  1  heater,  Viva,  when  we  have  tasted 
that  olla  podrida?"  he  asked; — they  had  gone  to  the 
theater  each  night  that  she  had  been  in  Paris. 

Viva  shook  her  head. 

"And  why  ?     Theaters  were  your  Elysium." 

"They  are  nothing  to  me  since  .s/ie  is  not  true!"  mur- 
mured the  child.     "  1  could  not  hear  to  see  her  act  again  I" 

"Chut!  How  can  actresses  be  true,  little  one?  They 
arc  always  representing  whal  they  do  not  feel." 

Viva  shook  her  head  again. 

"1  thought  it  was  all  true,"  she  said  softly.  "Else  I 
should  not  have  cared." 

She  had  been  wounded  in  her  tenderest  point — her 


188  TRICOTRIN, 

good  faith.  She  had  believed  in  this  woman  with  all  her 
soul;  she  had  identified  herself  with  all  that  the  actress 
had  portrayed;  that  all  this  which  had  so  moved  her 
should  have  been  false,  made  her  feel  cheated  and  de- 
spoiled ;  that  the  sweetness  of  that  angel-face  should  have 
been  only  a  painted  mask,  made  her  resent  the  theft,  on 
false  pretenses,  of  her  sympathy  and  love. 

At  that  moment,  happily  for  the  distraction  of  her 
thoughts,  the  soup  boiled  over;  Viva  was  at  once  ab- 
sorbed in  its  rescue.  It  was  hot,  sweet,  strong,  delicious, 
and,  better  than  all,  of  her  own  preparation.  She  was 
just  pouring  it  out  when  the  door  opened,  and  the  Due  de 
Lira  entered  in  the  twilight.  Viva  was  incensed  beyond 
measure! — ah!  how  mean  a  thing  of  the  people  she  must 
look,  she  thought,  her  cheeks  scarlet  with  the  fire,  her 
hands  filled  with  a  brass  pipkin,  her  laugh  ringing  loud 
and  long  because  the  little  round  apples,  stuck  all  over 
with  cloves,  bobbed  so  drolly  up  and  down  in  the  fragrant 
mixture!  So  she  fancied; — little  dreaming  that  the 
stranger  was  musing  what  a  picture  for  Hebe  she  looked, 
and  thinking  that  he  would  have  given  all  he  owned  to 
be  able  to  find  mirth  and  pleasure  in  apples  dancing  on  a 
frothy  lake  of  wine  as  she  did,  and  as  Ben  Jonson  had 
done  before  her. 

She  did  not  attach  any  importance  to  the  new-comer ; 
she  did  not  know  his  rank;  she  thought  him  cold,  gray, 
silent,  uninteresting, — not  the  least  like  King  Arthur,  or 
even  the  Prince  Faineant;  but  he  had  given  her  a  seat  in 
a  carriage,  and  Viva  was  of  the  temper  that  made  her 
always  want  to  look  her  very  best,  even  in  the  eyes  of  an 
organ-grinder  that  she  listened  to  in  the  streets.  More- 
over, she  saw  that  he  admired  her  and  studied  her,  though 
he  said  little  to  her,  but  conversed  almost  entirely  with 
Tricotrin  or  Mere  Mevei-t;  and  she  had  that  thorough 
coquetry  by  nature  which  made  her  love  homage,  whether 
or  no  she  cared  two  straws  for  the  one  who  rendered  it. 
To  some,  admiration  is  valueless,  unless  from  those  who 
in  turn  they  also  admire  :  but  Viva  was  not  so  fastidious. 
She  delighted  in  even  the  stupid  open-mouthed  stare  of 
amazement  at  her  loveliness,  that  a  despised  cow-boy 
would  give  as  she  passed  the  place  where  he  lay  among 
his  grazing  herds. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         189 

For  she  was  feminine  to  her  heart's  core. 

The  Duke's  advent  spoilt  her  soup,  and  also  spoilt  her 
content. 

Tricotrin  saw  that, — impatiently.  Himself,  he  had 
both  regard  and  respect  for  the  grave,  gentle,  melancholy 
person  whose  dignities  brought  so  little  joy  with  them; 
but  he  wished  the  nobleman  had  not  found  his  way  to 
this  attic,  and  he  was  perplexed  as  to  his  meaning  in 
coming  there.  With  less  than  his  usual  courtesy  he  cut 
the  visit  shorter  than  it  would  have  been  by  bidding  his 
caller  farewell,  and  taking  Viva  with  him  to  a  Cafe  Chan- 
tant. 

The  girl  heartily  enjoyed  these  things,  and  he  loved  to 
see  her  among  them,  since  they  were  what  he  could  easily 
bestow. 

The  music  enchanted  her ;  and  the  coarser  meanings 
of  some  popular  songs  could  not  harm  her,  since  she  was 
in  absolute  ignorance  of  the  construction  put  upon  the 
phrases  that  evoked  such  laughter  around  her.  She 
laughed,  too,  because  the  melodies  were  so  mirth  provok- 
ing in  their  airy  and  droll  cadences,  because  the  gas-lit 
scene  was  so  pretty  and  exciting,  because  all  those  stu- 
dents and  grisettes  about  her  laughed  so  riotously;  but 
the  songs  might  have  been  in  Greek  for  aught  that  she 
understood  of  them. 

Then,  when  they  were  over,  she  sat  at  a  little  round 
table  and  ate  her  ices,  and  tasted  her  first  champagne, 
and  amused  herself  with  the  eternal  stream  of  picturesque 
gas-lit  life  that  passed  before  her,  and  went  to  bed  just 
tired  enough  to  fall  asleep  at  once  and  dreamlessly.  He 
bad  made  her  forget  her  own  discontent:  she  was  happy, 
and  found  that  it  was  after  all  possible  to  enjoy  one's  self 
among  '•  the  ] pie." 

Bui  fate  undid  all  that  ho  had  done.  The  next  day,  in 
the  dusky  hour,  Viva,  Left  alone  for  a  little  while,  sat  in 
the  window-seat  reading  by  the  Lingering  light  a  histori- 
cal romance  that  delighted  her — a  romance  wherein  a 
herdsman's  adopted  daughter,  alter  many  vicissitudes, 
was  proved  to  lie  sole  heiress  of  the  mighty  castle  thai 
had  frowned  upon  her  from  her  birth.  She  was  absorbed  in 
it  when  the  door  was  thrown  open  by  some  personage  in 


190  TRICOT  R  IN, 

a  glimmer  of  green  and  gold,  and  into  the  chamber,  thus 
ushered  but  unannounced,  came  the  most  exquisite  little 
figure  she  had  ever  beheld.  The  figure  of  a  very  small, 
very  old  lady,  with  the  most  delicate  features  conceivable, 
white  hair,  black  eyes  that  still  shone  like  stars,  a  profu- 
sion of  laces,  a  gold-headed  stick,  and  red,  high-heeled 
shoes  that  clicked  a  musical  patter  over  the  bare  floor. 

A  fairy  at  last!  Viva  rose,  transfixed.  "It  must  be 
Cinderella's  godmother  herself!"  she  thought;  "there 
could  not  be  two  fairies  like  that!"  And  in  an  instant 
her  imagination  leapt  back  to  her  home  by  the  Loire,  and 
she  saw  Roi  Dore  changed  into  a  beautiful  prince,  and 
Bebe  into  four  white  horses,  and  the  pumpkins  into  gilded 
carriages,  and  the  chestnuts  into  diamonds,  and  herself 

into but  her  dreams  were  broken  by  the  fairy's  voice, 

imperious  but  kindly : 

"Do  you  know  who  I  am,  my  child  ?" 

"Yes,"  murmured  Viva,  awed  by  this  immortal  visitant 
as  she  would  have  been  by  no  mortal  empress. 

"Indeed!     Who,  then?" 

Viva's  answer  was  hushed  and  reverential. 

"A  Fairy!     And  I  have  hoped  for  you  so  long." 

The  lady  looked  at  her  in  astonishment,  then  fairly 
laughed  outright.  She  was  not  displeased ;  her  old  age 
being  very  lovely  and  delicate,  it  was  neither  distasteful 
nor  inappropriate  to  be  taken  for  a  fairy. 

"No,  my  dear,  you  mistake,"  she  said,  seating  herself 
on  one  of  the  hard  chairs.  "I  am  no  fairy,  though  I  may 
do  as  well  as  one  perhaps.     I  am  the  Duchess  de  Lira." 

Viva  said  nothing;  she  felt  perfectly  certain  that  she 
was  right,  that  nothing  mortal  could  be  so  exquisite,  so 
small,  yet  so  awe-inspiring  as  her  visitant;  but  she  knew 
how  dangerous  it  was  to  contradict  fairies  when  they 
wished,  to  suppress  their  identity,  and  remained  discreetly 
silent  accordingly. 

"  Come  here  and  let  me  look  at  you,"  said  her  visitant. 

Viva  obeyed,  a  little  anxiously ;  how  did  she  know  but 
what  her  guest  might  change  the  brass  pipkin  into  a 
chariot,  and  whisk  her  off  through  the  open  lattice? 

Madame  de  Lira  turned  her  gently  to  the  fading  light, 
and  looked  her  "all  over  with  inexorable  scrutiny.     Not 


TUE- STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         l<)\ 

a  single  flaw  could  have  escaped  those  ruthless  and  pierc- 
ing eyes;  but  they  failed  to  find  one,  and  softened  their 
gaze  ere  their  inspection  was  done. 

"  Very  well,  very  indeed,"  she  muttered,  as  she  loosened 
her  hold  on  the  child.  "  Of  an  exquisite  grace,  as  he  said ; 
and  surely  not  of  the  people." 

Viva  colored  hotly  as  she  heard. 

"You  are  very  pretty — nay,  you  are  very  beautiful," 
pursued  the  old  lady,  calmly  and  critically.  "  With 
another  year  or  two,  when  your  form  shall  have  fully 
developed,  you  will  be  magnificent, — with  culture  and 
dress.  I  have  heard  all  about  you.  You  call  yourself 
Viva?" 

"  Yes,  Madame ;"  she  was  still  thinking  of  all  that  she 
would  get  this  fairy  to  do:  first  and  foremost,  Tricotrin 
must  be  made  King  of  the  World,  and  grand'mere  must 
be  given  new  youth. 

"Viva!  It  means  nothing,  but  it  is  not  ugly.  You 
could  not  have  been  baptized  in  a  Catholic  country,  for 
there  is  no  such  name  in  the  Saints'  Calendar.  Well, 
you  are  a  handsome  child;  and  I  pity  you,  my  dear.  I 
will  take  you  home  to  stay  with  me." 

"To  stay  with  you!"  echoed  Viva,  in  amazement. 
She  had  been  a  little  bewildered  as  to  why  a  fairy  god- 
mother should  allude  to  the  matter  of  a  baptism  at  which 
she  must  have  been  the  principal  person  present,  and  she 
did  not  think  it  according  to  elfin  creeds  to  he  very  par- 
ticular about  the  saints  or  their  calendar  cither.  But 
to  go  and  stay  with  her,  in  her  palace;  of  cloud  or  of  sear 
cavern,  was  an  instantaneous  transformation  aboul  which 
there  could  benodoubt.  Did  she  not  know  what  Cinder- 
ella had  gone  to!  "  But  I  cannot.  I  dare  not  I"  she  mur- 
mured, in  sudden  remembrance.  "Imusi  bear  first  what 
he  says.  He  was  so  angry  about  the  young  Prince; 
and  I  cannot  vex  him  again  ! " 

"I  thank  you,  my  Waif!"  said  a  voice  from  the  door- 
way. "You  have  been  faithful  under  trial,  which  Peter, 
whom  men  call  Saint,  was  not." 

The  Duchess  de  Lira  put  up  her  gold  glasses  at  the 
figure  she  beheld — a  figure  \<-\-y  Btrange  to  her,  with  his 
linen  blouse,  and    his   great    meerschaum,   and    his   litllo 


192  TRICOTRIN, 

black  Mistigri,  who  spoke  in  this  careless  fashion,  and 
blasphemed  the  rock  of  the  Church  ! 

"Madame  la  Duchesse,"  he  said,  as  he  approached  her 
with  that  courteousness  which,  frank  to  all  men,  was 
graceful  to  all  women,  "you  are  come  to  see  my  Waif? 
Nay,  that  is  kind  and  generous.  May  I  ask  to  what  you 
were  tempting  her  ?" 

The  old  Duchess  gazed  at  him  in  silence ;  she  had 
heard  of  him,  but  she  had  never  seen  him.  She  had  ex- 
pected a  man  of  the  "bas  peuple,"  with  whom  she  could 
have  dealt  in  sublime  condescension ;  she  saw  a  man  to 
whom  even  she  felt  condescension  was  not  possible,  and 
who  had,  even  to  her  fastidious  eyes,  an  air  of  race  and 
of  breeding  undeniable. 

Tricotrin  turned  to  the  child. 

"Go  to  your  room,  Viva;  Madame  and  I  will  talk 
alone." 

Viva  obeyed,  though  very  reluctantly,  and  with  many 
a  glance  at  her  fairy. 

"There  was  no  need  to  send  her  away,"  said  the  old 
lady,  coldly.  "My  son  is  interested  in  her;  he  begged 
me  to  show  her  some  kindness.  It  is  to  be  regretted 
that  a  child  of  so  much  promise  should  be  lost  in  such  a 
life  as  this.  I  am  willing  that  she  should  come  and  stay 
awhile  in  my  household,  that  I  may  see  tf  anything  can 
be  made  of  her " 

"Made  of  her!"  echoed  Tricotrin  bitterly.  "You  mean, 
Madame,  that  you  would  amuse  yourself  with  her  while 
she  is  fresh  to  you,  as  with  some  new  bird  from  the  tropics; 
and  then,  when  you  have  tired  of  her,  have  her  trained 
for  the  opera,  or  cast  off  for  the  theater,  as  the  bird  might 
be  given  to  sing  in  a  public  show,  no  matter  whether  its 
first  notes  were  its  death-knell?" 

He  spoke  with  unconsidered  irony,  on  the  sting  of  the 
impatient  wrath  that  he  felt  that  these  aristocrats  could 
never  leave  her  in  peace,  but  must  ever  try  to  turn  her 
away  from  him  at  the  very  moment  her  heart  seemed  knit 
closest  to  his. 

Madame  de  Lira  rose  with  that  dignity  which,  in  so 
fragile  a  form,  had  so  awed  the  Waif. 

"  Whether  it  be  ignorance  or  ingratitude  on  your  part," 


TIIE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         193 

she  said,  icily,  "I  do  not  attempt  to  decide.  Your  inso- 
lence is  sufficient  to  frustrate  all  my  efforts  for  the  young 
girl's  welfare." 

Tricdtrin's  forehead  flushed ;  he  saw  that  he  had  been 
rude  to  an  aged  woman. 

"I  was  wrong,  Madame,"  he  said,  quickly.  "Pardon 
me.  It  stings  me  to  hear  her  spoken  of  as  a  thing  to  be 
bartered  in,  that  is  all." 

"There  is  no  question  of  barter,"  said  the  slow,  gentle 
voice  of  the  Due  de  Lira  behind  him. 

His  mother  interrupted  his  words: 

"  My  son,  to  comply  with  your  wishes,  I  have  done 
what  has  been  exceedingly  distasteful  to  me.  The  mat- 
ter has  concluded  as  I  foresaw:  take  me  to  my  carriage." 

"  Stay,  Madame,"  entreated  her  son,  reverentially.  "The 
matter  is  but  commenced.  What  has  Viva  herself  said? 
The  Duchess,"  he  continued  to  Tricotrin,  hurriedly, 
"came  to  invite  the  child  for  a  month's  stay  with  her,  at 
my  wish.     Surely  you  cannot  refuse  such  a " 

"I  leave  you  to  make  your  entreaty  to  your — friend  !" 
said  the  Dueller  with  her  delicate,  glacial  sneer,  that  she 
diil  not  spare  even  to  her  son.  "The  girl  can  accept  or 
caii  refuse.  But  I  must  beg  you  to  take  me  down  stairs. 
Whether  it  be  ignorance  or  insolence  in  this  person  I  do 
not  seek  to  inquire,  at  all  events  it  is  ingratitude,  and 
strange  neglect  of  that  young  creature's  interests." 

The  last  sentence  struck  Tricotrin  with  a  pang.  Was 
his  love  growing  brutal  in  selfishness? 

"  Forgive  me,  Madame!"  he  said,  rapidly;  "I  was  rude 
to  you.  It  stings  me  to  have  her  spoken  of  as  a  thing  to 
be  traded  in;  but  what  is  it  you  mean  to  her  ?" 

The  old  aristocrat  was  softened  from  her  wrath. 
•  "A  fine  man,  and  gracefully  mannered."  she  mused,  as 
she  answered,  still  coldly.  "I  mean  well,  as  you  may 
imagine.  M.  de  Lira  interests  himself  in  this  child.-  She 
is  beautiful;  she  is  unl'ort  uuate  ;  she  occupies  a  terrible 
position  in  having  no  friend  bul  yourself  1  would  rescue 
her  from  it  if  it  be  possible.  Si.  de  Lira  affirms  that  he 
himself  answer.-  tor  the  truth  of  your  story  concerning 
her, — he  has  perfect  faith  in  your  integrity  ;  and  it  seems 
to  us " 

1? 


194  TRICOTRIN, 

Tricotrin's  eyes  blazed  like  a  lion's. 

"Madame!  I  can  hear  no  more  words  in  that  tone. 
Do  yori  speak  of  us  like  paupers?  'A  terrible  position!' 
Why  does  Viva  occupy  a  terrible  position  ?  She  has  been 
reared  according  to  nature,  and  not  according  to  art.  Is 
that  terrible?     It  is  rare." 

"  It  is  impossible  to  converse  with  any  one  who  de- 
means himself  thus,"  observed  the  Duchess,  frigidly.  "  I 
say  '  terrible'  advisedly.  The  position  of  any  female  child 
just  growing  to  womanhood  must  be  so  with  no  friend 
but  a  man  who  states  that  he  is  not  her, father,  and  does 
not  purpose  to  become  her  husband." 

Tricotrin  started,  and  the  blood  flushed  his  forehead  as 
he  heard;  he  paused  a  moment  ere  he  replied. 

"I  am  old  enough  to  be  the  one,  too  old  to  be  the  other," 
he  answered,  at  length.  "But — I  thank  you  for  having 
shown  me  a  danger  for  her  that  I  had  overlooked." 

The  old  woman  glanced  at  him  with  her  piercing  eyes, 
which  had  lost  little  of  the  keenness  of  their  youth. 

"The  girl  is  beautiful," she  said  curtly,  taking  a  sweet- 
meat from  a  silver  box.  He  felt  all  that  she  intended  to 
convey  under  that  simple  observation. 

"Madame,  I  thank  you,"  he  said  hurriedly.  "You 
have  recalled  to  me  the  world's  skepticism  of  all  inno- 
cence or  honesty,  and  its  ready  credulity  of  all  vileness! 
Forgive  my  late  roughness ;  what  is  it  you  would  offer 
to  the  child?" 

Madame  de  Lira  coughed  a  little :  she  was  hardly  pre- 
pared for  so  direct  a  question,  so  she  parried  it. 

"I  offer  her — my  countenance.  If  she  come  under 
my  roof  for  a  few  weeks  I  can  better  determine  what  will 
be  for  her  real  good  hereafter.  In  any  case  you  may  be 
certain  that  I  should  do  whatever  was  just,  and  give 
whatever  social  advantages  she  might  prove  herself  to 
deserve." 

He  repressed  a  passionate  oath  at  the  insolence  of  patron- 
age that  ran  through  all  the  words  :  they  were  meant  in 
kindliness,  and  out  of  justice  toward  Viva  it  was  not  his 
right  to  cast  them  back  with  all  the  contempt  and  irnpa- 
tiencethat  rose  at  them  in  his  soul. 

"  Do  you  mean,"  he  said  at  length,  and  his  voice  was 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         1<j5 

hoarse  and  hard,  "that  you  will  play  with  Viva  for  awhile 
as  with-  some  new  lapdog,  or  rare  piece  of  faience,  and 
when  you  have  wearied  of  her,  cast  her  aside  as  you  cast 
the  dog  and  the  china  to  the  pages  or  the  cabinets  ?  Or. — 
do  you  rneananoble  and  humane  benevolence,  which  will 
honor  you  more  than  all  your  charities  and  bequests  to 
all  the  churches  in  the  world  ?     Do  you  mean " 

Madame  de  Lira's  sparkling  eyes  were  gathering  fierce 
fire,  and  she  would  have  answered  the  audacity  of  such 
an  arraignment  by  withdrawing,  once  and  for  all,  her 
unappreciated  condescension,  had  not  the  gentle  voice  of 
her  son  interposed. 

"  Tricotrin,  you  misapprehend  us,  I  fear.  It  is  at  my 
entreaty  that  my  mother  has  come  hither  to  see  what  it 
may  possibly  be  in  our  power  to  do  for  your  Waif.  Will 
you  come  aside  with  me,  and  let  Viva  return  to  the 
Duchess  ?" 

Tricotrin  shook  himself  with  a  gesture  of  intolerable 
impatience. 

,  "For  what?  That  she  may  be  made  more  ill-content 
still  with  the  life  that  is  simplest,  truest,  and  most  inno- 
cent for  her  ?" 

Madame  de  Lira  rose  from  her  seat. 

"  My  son,  oblige  me  by  taking  me  to  my  carriage.  You 
will  be  so  good  as  to  acknowledge  that  I  was  in  the  right 
when  I  predicted  the  outrage  I  should  receive  as  my 
reward  for  gratifying  your  wishes  against  my  own  judg- 
ment." 

"  Outrage  !  By  heaven  !"  cried  Tricotrin,  with  all  the 
headlong  impulse  of  pain.  "Would  you  admit  the  title 
of  a  stranger  to  claim  one  of  your  Iapdogs  ?  Viva  has 
as  much  interest  for  me  as  your  greyhounds  for  you  1" 

But  the  old  Duchess  had  passed  beyond  the  reach  of 
his  words,  and  was  descending  the  crooked  stairs  to  her 
equipage.  A  few  moments  later,  her  son  re-entered  the 
room.  Tricotrin  stood  silent  on  the  hearth,  with  the  red 
blaze  of  the  Stormily  setting  sun  shed  full  across  him. 
lie  did  not  look  up  ;  he  did  not  speak  :  the  other  hesitated 
a  minute,  then  approached  him. 

"  Tricotrin,  you  were  surely  discourteous  to  rhv  mother?'' 

"Possibly." 


196  TRICOTRIN, 

"And  you  totally  misapprehended  her." 

"That  I  doubt." 

"  The  fault  of  her  visit,  if  fault  it  be,  lies  with  me.  I 
have  endeavored  to  interest  her  in  Viva  ;  I  have  succeeded 
in  doing  so.  You  must  know  that  she  can  be  a  valuable 
friend  if  she  pleases ;  and  in  this  instance  I  believe  she 
would  so  please.  Are  you  justified  in  depriving  the  child 
of  all  the  benefits  she  would  derive  from  such  friend- 
ship ?" 

"  Benefits  !  What  benefits  ?  To  be  subject  to  the  cold 
winds  of  caprice  ?  To  be  the  plaything  of  a  fine  lady's 
vagaries  ?  To  see  the  smile  of  to-day  become  the  sneer 
of  to-morrow  ?  To  be  a  patronized  thing,  on  whom  great 
people  can  vent  at  their  will  their  variations  of  ennui  and 
spleen  ?  I  perceive  nothing  in  such  '  benefits'  deserving 
either  of  my  acceptance  or  of  her  gratitude." 

"  You  are  unjust.  We  are  not  the  heartless  and  frivol- 
ous creatures  you  would  make  us  us  to  be.     If  Viva " 

Tricotrin  was  not  softened  by  the  gentle  words  ;  they 
tenfold  increased  the  unreasoning,  vehement  rage  that 
possessed  him  ;  the  rage  born  of  pain  like  that  of  some 
gallant  animal  under  a  shot-wound. 

"Viva !  what  of  Viva  ?  What  has  any  living  creature 
to  do  with  Viva  save  myself?  Because  I  cannot  keep 
her  in  the  luxurious  wastefulness  of  a  palace,  can  I  lay 
no  claim  to  a  life  that  I  saved  ?  Because  I  found  her 
nameless,  penniless,  ownerless,  is  that  any  reason  why 
the  first  stranger  that  fancies  her  has  stronger  claim  on 
her  existence  than  I  ?  Because  a  child's  heated  imagina- 
tions, and  the  poisonous  whispers  of  fools,  for  awhile 
make  her  ingrate  enough  to  despise  the  life  that  has  shel- 
tered her  body,  and  kept  stainless  her  soul,  is  that  plea 
enough  for  me  to  surrender  every  right  to  protect,  and 
every  title  to  guide,  her  ?  '  She  is  ilbcontent,'  say  you  ! 
Good  God  1  Was  there  ever  a  fondled  thing  that  did  not 
bite  through  the  hand  that  caresses  it  ?  Was  there  ever 
a  plant  reared  with  care  and  with  tenderness  that  an  alien 
hand  did  not  break  off  the  flowering-crown  when  it  blos- 
somed ?  « Ill-content !'  A  fine  plea  !  Would  she  have 
been  more  Content,  pray  you,  reared  in  the  public  nurse- 
ries, where  the  children  of  bastardy  are  cursed  from  their 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         197 

infancy  up,  for  the  crime  of  having  come  to  the  birth 
undesirecl  and  un welcomed  ?" 

The  fiery  torrent  of  words  rushed  headlong  from  his 
lips;  the  claims  he  never  breathed  to  her,  he  flung  out  in 
the  face  of  those  who  desired  to  rob  him  of  her;  the 
passion  of  his  temperament,  that  slept  under  the  sunny 
vivacity  of  his  habitual  nature,  broke  loose  under  the 
unbearable  pang  that  it  was  to  him,  to  have  her  thus  sought 
and  thus  bribed.  His  impulses  were  hot  and  swift  as 
volcanic  fire,  and  he  stayed  neither  to  consider  nor  restrain 
them. 

The  Due  de  Lira  listened  with  regret,  but  not  in  anger, 
for  he  knew  the  provocation  that  he  gave ;  and  he  knew 
the  justice  of  the  resentment  it  awakened. 

"Will  you  forgive  me  if  I  speak  quite  plainly?"  he 
said  at  last.  "  Of  course  you  have  indisputable  claim  to 
all  her  love  and  fealty;  indisputable  title  to  defend  and 
shape  her  life,  howsoever  may  seem  best  to  you.  But 
what  is  it  that  does  seem  so?  What  is  it  you  intend  to 
do  with  her  ?" 

Tricotrin's  eyes  fired  like  an  angered  hawk's. 

"  I  deny  the  right  of  any  one  to  ask  the  question  I" 

"Perhaps  I  have  no  right,"  answeredhis  hearer,  patiently. 
"Nevertheless,  1  do  so.  Listen,  Tricotrin:  if  you  project 
to  make  this  girl  anything  more  to  you  than  she  is  now, 
say  so,  and  I  will  not  press  a  single  word  more  on  yen. 
She  is  yours  by  right  in  that  ease  :  and  none  of  a  surety 
have  weightier  or  nobler  claim  upon  her  heart  or  her 
future  than  you,  who  stand  in  the  stead  to  her  of  every 
tie.  But,  if  you  have  no  such  intent,  and  all  you  have 
hitherto  said  implies  that  you  have  not,  you  will  scarcely  be 
enabled  much  longer  to  continue  your  present  relationship 
to  her?  Reflect,  you  have  no  parentage  to  her;  can  you 
be  the  sole  companion  and  protector  of  her  life  without 
exposing  her  to  injurious  suspicion  ?  Will  the  world  give 
you  credit  for  your  disintere.-tedness,  or  her  for  her  inno- 
cence ?      It  has  tOO  little  of  either,  itself,  to  do  so." 

"Pshaw!"  broke  in  Tricotrin,  with   imperious  scorn 
"Have  I  ever  lived  for  the  world?     Thai  bugbear  and 
scarecrow  of  the  millions  of  fools,  the  breath  of  whose 
lungs  is  the  lies  off  other  men's  lips  ?    The  world  !    What 

17* 


198  TRICOTRIK, 

have  Yiva  and  I  to  do  with  the  world  ?  We  forget  it ;  it 
can  afford  to  forget  us — a  bohemian  and  a  foundling." 

"  You  can  forget  it :  she  cannot,  she  will  not.  For  it 
will  not  forget  her.  Hear  me  out :  you  are  just,  you  are 
true.  You  will  admit  a  truth  even  when  it  militate  against 
your  desire.  If  Yiva  be  not  your  wife,  not  your  daughter, 
how  shall  you  persuade  others  that  she  is  not  your  mis- 
tress ?  If  her  love  for  you  be  not  such  as  would  make 
her  happy  in  union  with  you,  how  shall  you  render  her 
future  content?  You  said  yourself,  a  few  nights  ago,  that, 
if  ill-content,  she  must  become  of  all  women  the  most 
miserable.  It  is  certain  she  will  do  so.  You  will  attempt 
impossibilities  if  you  seek  to  keep  her  womanhood  in  the 
same  solitude  that  has  made  her  childhood  so  joyful.  She 
is  ambitious,  proud,  quick  to  resent,  eager  to  enjoy — is  it 
for  the  child  whom  you  regard  so  tenderly  that  you  can 
determine  to  prepare  a  future  in  which  all  the  darkness  of 
an  imputed  shame,  and  none  of  the  solace  of  an  indulged 
love,  will  be  her  portion  ?" 

"  Oh  God  !" — the  words  escaped  him  with  the  stifled 
cry  of  a  fierce  suffering,  He  swung  round  and  flashed 
his  eyes  over  the  speaker. 

"You  find  strange  eloquence  !    Are  you  her  lover  too?" 

"You  know  me  better  than  that,"  said  the  other, 
simply,  with  a  gentle  dignity  that  bore  an  unspoken 
rebuke  in  it.  "  A  lover  ! — I !  My  years  may  be  no  more 
than  your  own ;  but  I  have  none  of  your  youth  left  in 
me.  Left,  do  I  say  ?  I  never  knew  it.  No  ;  I  speak  as 
I  do  merely  from  such  interest  in  her  as  any  one — not  a 
brute  or  a  libertine — must  feel  for  a  young  creature  of  such 
promise.  What  I  say  sounds  harsh  and  insolent  doubt- 
less ; — but  your  justice  will  acknowledge  the  singleness 
of  my  motive.  I  have  no  title  to  dictate  to  you,  no  excuse 
perhaps  for  interference  with  you,  but  I  do  repeat  this : — 
you,  who  are  so  anxious  to  guard  her  from  every  evil 
breath,  you  who  have  acted  with  so  much  nobility  toward 
her  in  her  defenselessness,  must,  for  your  own  conscience' 
sake  and  the  sake  of  her  future,  choose  between  one  of  two 
things.  Take  the  right  of  marriage  over  her  life,  or  do 
not  stand  between  her  and  my  mother's  protection  of  her. 
You  alone  can  know  which  of  the  two  will  best  advance 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         199 

her  happiness  and  yours.  Whichever  you  decide  on,  toll 
me; — and  in  either  rase  believe  me  my  friendship  is  yours 
if  you  will  have  it.  A  Lira  does  not  soon  forget ;  I  have 
not  forgotten  the  July  night  in  my  Cour  d'llonncur." 

He  passed  quickly  through  the  evening  gloom,  and  out 
from  the  little  chamber  as  the  words  left  his  lips;  he  was 
generous,  sensitive,  sympathetic,  it  had  not  been  without 
fear  and  hesitation  that  he  had  spoken  them. 

Tricotrin,  in  his  solitude,  never  stirred  from  where  he 
stood  before  the  wood-fire,  whose  flames  were  now  the 
only  light  left  in  the  darkened  room.  The  chimes  of  a 
neighboring  clock  told  off  two  quarters,  with  the  strokes 
echoing  through  the  open  casement,  but  he  did  not  hear 
them.     He  was  lost  in  thought. 

The  mercy  he  had  shown  was  bringing  its  reward — in 
bitterness. 

"To  have  the  fate  of  Bruno!"  he  muttered,  dashing  the 
falling  hair  from  his  eyes  that  looked  gloomily  down  into 
the  leaping  (lames. 

To  take  from  gratitude  what  would  not  come  from 
love; — to  gain  through  innocent  tenderness  what  would 
not  be  given  through  riper  passion ; — to  bind  to  him  in 
its  wax-like  malleability  what,  when  it  changed  shape 
with  older  years,  would  recoil  perchance  from  his  clasp  ; — 
to  claim  the  sweetness  of  kisses  by  the  plea  that  the  lips 
which  he  sought  had  been  fed  by  his  bread, — these  were 
what  he  would  do  if  he  chose  the  first  of  the  alternatives 
presented  to  him,  if  he  cheated  her  and  himself  into  the 
faith  that  a  child's  affection  was  a  woman's  love.  And 
these  done,  what  would  be  their  end,  their  sequel  ? 

The  freshness  of  winds  and  waters,  (he  changes  of  mo- 
tion and  rest,  the  sound  of  a  song  on  the  air,  the  glow  of 
an  alp  in  a  sunrise,  the  lire  of  toil  among  vine  or  olive 
or  millet,  the  play  and  the  pleasure  of  sinew  ami  muscle, 
the  bright  Bhock  of  sea-Water  in  a  leap  from  the  rocks,  the 
careless  zesl  of  free  days  untroubled  with  thoughl  for  the 
morrow,  the  frankness  of  welcome  from  the  grasp  of  the 
mountaineer  or  the  eyes  of  the  girl-gipsy, — all  these  made 
his  life  rich,  made  it  happy,  because  with  them  also  he 
had  the  heart  of  a  poet,  the  liberty  of  a  man.  Bui  she.  _ 
her  fancy  panted  for  power;  her  scorn  recoiled  from  this 


200  TRICOTRIN, 

simplicity  of  joy  which,  being  far  above  her,  she  deemed 
lay  far  beneath  her;  the  frail  strength,  and  the  languid 
senses,  of  a  girl's  youth  could  not  grasp  the  warmth,  and 
the  force,  and  the  rapture  which  he  could  feel  from  the 
mere  life  within  him,  and  the  mere  life  around  him.  The 
happiness  he  had  he  could  not  transfer  to  her.  She  would 
lie  in  his  bosom,  restless  as  a  bird  restrained  by  a  captive 
hand ;  she  would  ache  and  sigh  and  grow  weary  for  the 
things  of  wealth  and  of  pomp  that  he  could  not  bestow; 
and  then — and  then — to  those  sighs  some  other  would 
answer;  and  across  his  life  would  be  the  blackness  of  dis- 
honor and  desolation. 

He  beheld  her  future  and  his  own  as  in  some  mirror  of 
prophecy.  He  could  make  her  his  own — yes ;  as  the  hand 
that  has  fed  and  fondled  the  tame  hare  can  stay  the  trust- 
ful creature  as  a  captive  when  it  comes  for  a  caress.  But 
scarce  at  less  cost  than  the  fate  of  Bruno  for  him, — of  Cori- 
olis  for  her. 

And  yet — he  loved  her  with  all  the  power  of  his  tropi- 
cal nature ;  loved  her  with  a  new  and  sudden  love,  since 
the  day  that  he  had  flung  her  young  Faust  from  him. 
To  let  her  go  from  him,  to  let  her  drift  to  others,  was  tor- 
ture to  him. 

With  unconscious  violence  he  struck  his  clinched  hand 
on  the  iron  of  the  stove  by  which  he  stood. 

"  My  God  !  For  the  first  time  in  all  my  life  I  wish " 

The  wish  died  unnuttered  in  his  throat.  For  the  first 
time  in  all  his  laughter-lightened  years  he  wished  that  a 
thing  done,  that  a  choice  made,  in  his  earliest  youth  could 
be  undone,  and  be  reversed.  These  were  the  re wards.that 
his  tenderness  to  a  foundling  brought  him, — futile  regret, 
and  vain  desire ! 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         201 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

He  stood  there  still,  in  the  darkness,  with  his  clinched 
hand  resting1  on  the  iron;  alight  swift  movement  came 
near  him,  a  gay  laugh  echoed  through  the  silence. 

"I  could  not  stay  in  the  dark  any  longer.  Have  you 
sent  my  fairy  away?" 

The  thoughtless  words  thrilled  through  his  soul  as  Viva 
came  to  him:  was  the  jest  symbolical  of  a  terrible  truth? 
Was  he,  in  his  own  selfish  covetousness  of  her,  driving 
away  the  influence  by  which  all  the  colors  of  glory  that 
she  dreamed  of  might  bathe  her  life  in  their  radiance? 

She,  all  unconscious,  came  nearer  still,  and  nut  her 
hands  upon  his  arm. 

"  Was  she  a  fairy?  I  have  been  thinking  since  it  might 
be  foolish  of  me  to  fancy  her  so;  and  yet, — she  looked  so 
exactly  like  one,  and  nothing  but  a  fairy  could  have  prom- 
ised me  all  she;  did!" 

"  What  a  child  you  are  1"  he  said  impatiently,  with  an 
accent  in  his  voice  that  she  had  never  heard  before. 
"Fairy?     No!     Do  yousuppose  fairies  are  real  things?" 

"Grand'mere  does,"  said  Viva,  gravely.  "  But  do  tell 
me,  why  did  you  send  her  away?  May  I  go  and  see  her? 
If  she  be  not  a  fairy  she  must  be  something  very  ureal ; 
and — oh,  those  diamonds  on  her  lingers  when  she  uncov- 
ered her  hand  to  feel  my  hair  !" 

lie  shook  her  clasp  off  him  and  walked  to  the  window: — 
his  heart  was  full  of  tenderness,  anxiety,  yearning,  pain, 
and  contest  for  her  sake; — and  she  thoughl  of  the  glitter 
of  jewels  on  a  stranger's  hand.-! 

Viva  looked  at  him  with  a  little  sense  of  fear;  then 
glided  down  on  to  the  floor,  and  leant  there  in  fronl  of  the 
.-hive,  with  the  light  from  Its  open  door  playing  fitfully 
all  n\  er  her  picturesque  limbs. 

She  began  to  think  he  was  unkind; — he  had  sent  away 
her  Faust,  her  Coriolis,  and  now  her  Fairy. 


202  TRICOTRIN, 

It  was  some  time  before  he  spoke  to  her ;  then  it  was 
gravely  but  very  gently. 

"You  thought  me  harsh  to  your  actress,  Viva?"  It 
seemed  an  irrelevant  question,  but  it  sprang  from  his  own 
train  of  thought.     Viva  looked  into  the  embers. 

"Yes,"  she  said  truthfully  at  last:  she  wondered  how 
he  knew  that  she  was  thinking  of  Coriolis. 

"  Do  you  deem  her  justified  then  in  the  blow  she  dealt 
to  her  husband  ?" 

He  stood  behind  her ;  and  she  could  not  see  the  intense 
anxiety  that  was  in  his  eyes  as  they  were  fastened  on  her. 

She  took  thought  a  moment, — then  she  answered  him 
with  her  golden  head  dropped  on  one  side  in  meditation. 

"Justified?  No.  You  say  nothing  wrong  is  that;  and 
it  wa*s  wrong  in  her  of  course.  But, — you  see  I  can  fancy 
what  she  felt.  He  had  the  sea,  and  the  storms,  and  the 
boats,  and  the  other  fishermen, — and  he  was  born  for  it 
too,  and  chose  it  himself.  But  she, — she  might  love  him 
all  the  same,  you  know,  and  yet  she  might  hate  the  life, 
might  she  not? — feel  the  cabin  stifle  her,  and  the  days  go 
slowly,  and  the  great  waters  look  dreary,  and  so,  grow 
half  mad,  never  seeing  the  world  that  she  wanted  to  see. 
It  was  wrong,  because  he  loved  her  you  say,  and  did  all 
he  could,  and  could  not  help  being  poor.  But  still  for  her ; 
— ah,  it  is  so  hard  never  to  do  what  you  want  to  do  1  It 
made  her  wicked  I  fancy ;  and  then  she  grew  cruel ;  and 
forgot  that  he  would  suffer,  because  she  went  to  enjoy  1" 

He  heard  in  silence,  then  moved  from  her  back  to  the 
open  casement:  he  was  answered;  and  each  word  had 
gone  through  his  heart  like  the  thrust  of  a  knife. 

Her  very  ignorance  of  the  extent  of  the  sin  made  her 
pleading  for  its  excuse  more  pregnant  with  meaning  to 
his  ear.  Unconsciously  to  her,  her  sympathy  with  the 
actress  was  prescience  for  herself. 

Viva  sat  silent  some  moments  gazing  into  the  fire,  too 
absorbed  in  her  own  thoughts  to  note  that  he  had  not  re- 
plied  to  her.  She  started  as  his  voice,  after  awhile,  came 
again  through  the  gloom  from  where  he  leaned  by  the 
little  lattice. 

"  You  justify  infidelity  and  ingratitude  !  Well,  they 
are  accursed  sins  in  my  sight,  but  it  may  be  I  am  too 
harsh  to  them  ;  it  may  be  they  grow  ingrained  in  women !" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         203 

"Ob,  no  !  I  do  not  justify  them  !"  cried  the  child,  as 
she  sprang  to  her  feet,  frightened  and  grieved.  "  What 
do  you  mean?  What  can  you  think?  I  tried  to  say — 
only  I 'say  it  so  ill — that  what  she  did  was  heartless  and 
guilty,  but  yet  she  could  not  help  doing  it  as  it  were,  be- 
cause the  weariness  in  her  life  drove  her  to  it.  Now  look ! 
— how  I  love  grand'mere,  how  I  long  to  see  the  little 
kitchen  again,  how  fond  I  am  of  Roi  Dore,  and  Bebe,  and 
the  pigeons,  and  all.  And  yet! — so  wicked  I  am,  so 
shameful  I  am! — that  I  knoio  if  you  take  me  back  and 
leave  me  there  month  after  month,  year  after  year,  I  shall 
grow  so  impatient  of  them  every  one,  I  shall  so  long  for 
excitement,  and  light,  and  music,  and  applause,  and  all 
that  one  hears  and  sees  here  in  Paris,  I  shall  so  hate  that 
still  even  life  with  no  change  in  it  save  the  change  of  the 
leaves  from  green  into  yellow,  that — let  me  try  how  I 
may — I  shall  long  for  that  glitter  and  renown  on  the  stage 
as  she  did.  Do  not  be  angry  with  me;  it  is  better  to  tell 
you  the  truth;  and  how  can  I  help  what  I  feel  ?" 

He  gave  a  sharp  quick  sigh  as  he  heard  the  words 
poured  out  in  half-penitent  vehemence  : — how  was  he  to 
hope  to  keep  happy  and  innocent,  since  he  could  not  keep 
it  in  riches,  this  nature  that  panted  so  wistfully  for  for- 
bidden and  unattainable  things? 

"I  am  not  angered,"  he  said  wearily,  "and  God  forbid 
I  should  blame  you  for  truthfulness.  But,  I  see  plainly 
your  danger  and  my  duty.  You  must  tread  a  path,  high 
and  bright  in  the  sun  of  the  world's  smile;  or, — or — my 
child,  you  will  live  to  curse  me  that  my  feet  did  not  stamp 
the  life  out  of  you  when  that  life  was  scarce  more  than  a 
butterfly's  among  the  flowers!" 

Then  he  stooped,  and  touched  her  lips  with  hot  swift 
kisses,  and  put  her  gently  from  him,  and  went  out  alone 
into  the  shades  of  t  lie  autumn  night. 

She,  awed  ami  contrite,  stood  bewildered  in  the  glow 
of  the  burning  wood,  with  a  vexed  impatience  on  her  beau- 
tiful quivering  mouth. 

"What  could  he  mean?  He  grows  so  strange!"  she 
thought,  restlessly  beating  her  foot  upon  the  boards. 
"And  he  never  told  me  now  of  the  Fairy!" 

"  Viva!"  said  Mere  Meverl  from  t  he  doorway.     "  Viva, 


204  TRICOTRIN, 

here  are  some  chestnuts  the  greengrocer  below  us  has  just 
sent  you.     Look  what  fine  ones !" 

Viva  took  them  without  attention,  but  they  were  so 
large  and  so  tempting  that  she  interested  herself  in  setting 
them  on  the  embers  to  roast,  and  as  she  watched  them  in 
their  cooking  laughed  and  talked  with  the  good  woman, 
and  had  forgotten  all  her  wrongs  and  her  woes,  as  she 
peeled  off  the  shining  brown  skins  from  the  white  fruit 
within,  and  dipped  it  down  into  the  salt. 

She  had  no  care  but  what  the  chestnuts  consoled:  what 
did  she  know  of  the  great  soul  that  suffered  for  her  sake? 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

He  did  not  return  all  the  following,  day. 

Viva,  accustomed  to  look  to  him  for  all  her  amusements, 
and  impatient  to  hear  more  of  her  Fairy,  grew  restless, 
peevish,  wayward,  and  full  of  impatience. 

It  was  a  glorious  sunshiny  autumnal  day,  and  she  had 
to  spend  it  all  in-doors.  The  woman  Mevert  was  with 
her  sick  son,  Mere  Rose  busied  with  a  full  household. 
Viva  tried  all  her  occupations,  to  fling  each  away  in  dis- 
content, and  spent  the  chief  of  her  hours  beating  her  rosy 
fingers  on  the  lattice  in  petulant  wrath  at  her  detested 
detention.  As  the  day  wore  on  into  evening  she  grew 
very  angry,  like  the  spoilt  child  that  she  was ;  and  deem- 
ing herself  injured  by  such  unwonted  neglect,  worked  her- 
self into  a  chafing  rage  at  her  captivity ;  which  at  sunset 
she  varied  by  gliding  unperceived  down  the  stairway,  and 
seating  herself  on  the  wooden  step  of  the  door, — a  forbid- 
den seat  that  she  was  resolute  to  occupy  since  she  had 
been  kept  imprisoned  from  sunrise. 

Some  momentary  anxiety  touched  her  as  to  what  could 
have  kept  him  away ;    but  she  believed  devoutly  in  his 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         205 

omnipotence,  and  her  chief  sensation  was  fiery  anger  at 
her  own  disappointment. 

"He  is  cruel — cruel!"  she  said  feverishly  to  herself. 
"He  will  not  let  me  goto  Coriolis,  and  he  sends  even  that 
lovely  old  fairy  away  I     He  is  cruel !" 

And  she  felt  that  for  once  she  could  rebel  against  him 
without  scruple. 

A  caged  linnet  sang  above  her,  shaded  by  a  lime-bough : 
a  pot  of  autumn  roses  shed  their  fragrance  near  her:  the 
sunshine  was  playing  brightly  through  the  picturesque 
old  alley — but  she  found  no  pleasure  in  anything.  IS  he 
was  restlessly  flinging  away  the  gold  treasures  of  her 
childhood  in  reckless  eagerness  for  the  mirage  of  her  wo- 
manhood. 

"  If  only  he  would  let  me  go  to  the  stage  !"  she  thought, 
with  wistful  vehement  longing.  "He  says  I  must  tread 
a  high  path,  why  will  he  not  let  me  make  one  for  myself 
there?" 

The  words  that  he  had  spoken  had  made  a  deep  im- 
pression on  her  capricious  mind :  they  had  startled,  touched, 
and  moved  her;  but  she  was  capable  rather  of  feeling 
vividly  and  passionately,  than  of  feeling  for  any  very 
long  duration.  She  was  at  once  intensely  childlike  and 
intensely  woman-like;  and  she  had  all  the  fervor  of  the 
first,  with  all  the  changeability  of  the  latter,  temper. 

"  Souvent  femme  varie,  fol  a  que  se  fie,"  was  never  truer 
in  its  unmerciful  statement  than*  it  was  of  this  bright 
changeling  ;  but  with  her  as  with  most  of  her  sex,  though 
the  needle  of  her  fancy  veered  round  so  many  times  and 
with  such  swift  alternations,  it  never  long  ceased  to  point 
to  the  one  pole  star  of  her  own  vanity. 

The  pageant  of  the  stage  had  allured  her  with  fatal 
power:  the  blaze  of  a  public  recognition  wore  to  her  all 
the  Luminance  of  a  heavenly  apotheosis ;  sin •  panted  to  he 
great: — as  a  young  leopard,  captive  since  it  was  a  cub, 

pants   for   the    freedom   of  the    foresl    and    the    riot    of   the 

chase: — and  she  could  see  no  other  way  to  greatness. 

He   told    her  that    the  w;i\    was  thom-set,  and  ended  in  a 

Lake  A  vermis ;   but  she  disbelieved  him  with  all  the  as- 
sured audacious  obstinacy  of  young  ignorance,  and  she 

18 


206  TRICOTRIN, 

thought, — if  only  she  could  find  it  out,  and  pass  up- 
ward by  it,  and  smile  at  him  from  the  eminence  to  which 
it  led  ! 

The  poison  had  entered  her  soul :  and  although  he  had 
thought  that  he  had  drawn  out  all  its  virus,  it  had  sunk 
too  deeply  for  any  antidote  wholly  to  act  against  it.  More- 
over, the  face  and  the  grace  of  Coriolis  had  seduced  her 
imagination ;  and  no  warning,  no  counsel,  no  statement 
of  fact  could  dethrone  this  sovereign  of  her  fancy.  Through 
Coriolis  she  had  had  a  glimpse  into  the  one  world  that  at- 
tracted her;  the  one  life  that  to  her  looked  well  worth  the 
living:  her  thoughts  recurred  to  her  lost  paradise  again 
and  again  and  again.  But  now  with  more  dangerous 
force  :  for  they  were  nursed  in  silence.  She  had  learned 
not  to  speak  of  the  thing  that  lay  nearest  her  heart : — there 
is  no  surer  sign  with  any  youthful  thing  that  its  conscious- 
ness has  come,  and  that  its  innocence  is  in  peril. 

A  few  noons  before  she  had  sat  on  the  sill  of  the  little 
window,  impatient  to  go  out  into  the  sunny  noisy  street 
below.  She  had  wondered  why  the  grisette,  who  a  few 
days  before  had  been  sewing  so  merrily  that  rose-colored 
skirt,  now  worked  without  song  and  with  her  head  drooped 
so  low. 

"What  ails  thee,  Therese  ?"  She  had  heard  the  girl  who 
leaned  out  beside  her :  and  the  dark-eyed  worker  had 
dropped  her  head  lower  over  her  labor. 

"  Lulu  is  gone  to  study  in  Romel" 

"Ah,  bah !"  the  consoler  had  cried.  "  There  are  plenty 
more  students  as  good  as  Lulu:  and  besides — he  will 
come  back." 

The  grisette  had  shaken  her  glossy  head  with  a  smile 
as  sad  as  tears. 

"They  come  back  from  Rome — yes:  but  back  to  what 
they  left — never." 

And  Viva,  with  a  dim  perception  of  what  her  meaning 
had  been,  felt  her  heart  ache  for  the  speaker,  and  had 
watched  her  with  a  dreamy  interest,  half  sympathy,  half 
scorn. 

"Why  care  for  a  student? — if  it  were  a  king  now!" 
thought  the  patrician  foundling.  "  Still ! — it  must  be 
very  sad  to  love  like  that,  a  creature  who  does  not  care, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         20? 

but  only  goes  away,  gayly,  to  his  Rome  and  to  his 
pleasures !" 

She  was  being  quite  as  cruel  as  the  painter  Lulu:  but 
she  did  not  dream  of  applying  the  lesson  to  herself. 

As  she  sat  there,  fretting  at  her  durance,  doing  nothing, 
thinking  herself  cruelly  used  because  she  had  missed  one 
day  of  sunlight  in  the  streets  and  gardens  of  Paris,  she 
looked  now  and  then  up  at  the  opposite  window,  where 
the  grisette  sat  at  work.  She  saw  how  tearfully  the 
stitcher's  eyes  drooped  over  the  heavy  work  ;  how  wearily 
yet  how  tenderly  the  sewing-girl  stooped  ever  and  again 
to  a  little  wooden  cradle  at  her  feet;  how  listless  and  full 
of  pain  was  the  wan  faded  look  of  the  face  that  the  sunset, 
light  only  lit  to  make  paler  still:  and  she  felt  vaguely 
sorry  for  the  sorrow  that  never  had  touched  herself.  Yet 
she  thought,  half  in  contempt,  half  in  compassion: 

"  I  would  not  sit  weeping  there ; — I  would  go  to  a 
Rome  of  my  own,  and  make  myself  happy  with  somebody 
else  !" 

Of  the  love  that  sees  all  the  world  centered  in  one  single 
life,  Viva  had  no  conception.  It  looked  as  foolish  to  her 
as  a  bee  would  have  looked,  which,  finding  one  dower 
yield  it  no  fragrance,  yet  should  have;  clung  persistently 
to  the  oik;  cruel  and  sterile  blossom,  rejecting  all  the 
thousand  odors  of  the  thousand  other  roses  round  it. 

Instinctive  egotism  is  ever  instinctively  philosophical. 

As  she  sat  there  in  the  sun,  with  tin;  striped  awning 
over  her  head,  and  tin;  carol  of  the  linnet  on  her  ear,  there 
came  to  her  a  dainty  litile  page,  all  scarlet  and  gold,  like 
a  little  gallant  from  the  galleries  of  Versailles,  with  his 
hat,  in  his  hand,  and  a  profound  obeisance  that  woul  1 
have  done  honor  to  a  prince  Viva  started  and  colored 
at  the  sight  of  him:  then,  mindful  of  her  dignity,  sat  still 
and  regarded  him  with  a  mingling  of  curiosity  and  com- 
mand,—her  memory  wenl  to  her  lost  Faust:  thisdazzling 
baby-servitor  looked  just  like  such  an  emissary  as  he 

WOUld  have  sent. 

lie  bowed  again,  very  low  to  her. 

"Mademoiselle,  my  mistress  entreats  to  see  you  once 

more." 

"Your  mistress!" 


208  TRICOTRIST, 

Viva's  heart  beat  loud ;  her  cheeks  flushed  crimson,  her 
thoughts  sprang  instantly  to  the  truth: — earth  held  for 
her  but  one  woman. 

"Madame  Coriolis, — she  begs  to  speak  to  you,"  con- 
tinued the  little  page.  "  Her  carriage  waits — at  the  end  of 
this  passage-way, — she  trusts  you  will  do  her  this  honor  ?" 

Viva  pressed  her  hands  to  her  heart,  to  still  the  choking 
sob  that  rose  in  her  throat  at  the  recollection  that  she 
must  refuse  this  by  every  law  of  duty,  of  love,  and  of  obe- 
dience. 

"  I  cannot,  I  must  not!"  she  murmured.  "  It  would  be 
so  wicked  I" 

The  page,  regardless  of  her  words,  pressed  his  message 
on  her:  his  mistress  only  craved  a  word,  his  mistress 
never  was  answered  by  a  refusal,  his  mistress  was  accus- 
tomed to  have  her  own  way  and  will  at  all  times. 

"I  cannot,  I  dare  not!"  pleaded  Viva,  losing  all  the 
memory  of  her  own  dignity,  and  ready  at  every  word  to 
burst  into  tears.  "He  has  forbidden  me:  he  will  never 
speak  to  me  again  if  I  go  to  her.  I  long  to  come, — I  do 
indeed, — but  how  can  I  disobey  him  ?  He  is  all  I  have 
in  the  world, — he  is  so  good,  so  noble,  so  generous ; — it 
would  be  so  hideously  wicked  to  rebel  against  him  !" 

The  baby  in  scarlet  and  gold  suppressed  the  immeas- 
urable scorn  that  he  felt,  and  proved  himself  a  delicate 
tactician.  To  live  in  the  service  of  the  actress  was  to 
live  to  do  her  desire,  by  fair  means  or  by  foul.  He  en- 
treated, he  beguiled,  he  argued,  he  begged  for  his  own 
sake,  and  he  counseled  for  her  own,  in  language  so  well 
chosen,  that,  when  backed  by  the  seduction  of  her  own 
wishes,  it  proved  only  too  powerful  with  Viva. 

"It  is  only  to  speak  to  me,  it  cannot  be  much  harm?" 
she  pleaded  with  her  conscience,  as  she  cast  a  hasty  glance 
back  into  the  house.  The  two  women  were  not  there  to 
see ;  Tricotrin  was  away,  there  was  no  fear  of  detection ; 
and, — who  knew  what  she  miffht  miss  forever  if  she  flung 
this  chance  away  untried,  if  she  threw  this  offer  away 
untested  ? 

"I  will  go  !"  she  said  breathlessly,  casting  her  red  cloak 
that  lay  behind  her  over  her  head,  and  fleeing  fast  down 
the  street,  as  fast  as  though  she  fled  from  temptation. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         209 

She  knew  that  she  was  committing  a  great  sin  ;  sin- 
knew  that  she  was  doing  what  was  base,  disloyal,  and 
cowardly,  since  she  would  not  have  disobeyed  him  thus, 
save  in  his  absence;  she  know  that  she  was  false  to 
every  better  thing  within  her.  But  the  temptation  was 
too  strong,  the  allurement  was  too  glorious  in  hue  to  be 
rejected;  she  felt  vile  in  her  own  sight,  yet,  nevertheless, 
she  went. 

It  was  the  transgression  of  every  law  of  love.,  and 
honor,  and  duty,  and  pure  faith,  that  bound  her  life:  it 
was  the  casting  away  by  deliberate  act  of  all  the  sweet- 
ness and  the  safety  of  the  guardianship  which  environed 
her;  it  was  the  oblivion  of  his  gravest  counsel,  and  the 
defiance  of  his  tenderest  desire:  but  the  passion  for  glory 
that  possessed  her,  for  the  glory  that  to  her  was  embodied 
in  the  form  of  Coriolis,  was  stronger  than  every  other 
feeling  in  her.  She  blindly  followed  where  that  ignis 
fatuus  led. 

Panting,  trembling,  growing  pale  and  scarlet  by  turns, 
with  expectation  and  her  own  consciousness  of  evil  doing, 
she  stood  by  the  closed  carriage  from  which  the  face  of 
her  angel  looked  out,  in  the  little  antique  darkened  street, 
through  which  the  evening  light  was  wandering  in  rich, 
deep  rays  of  blended  color. 

"You  sent  for  me?"  she  ask"d  tremulously;  and  look- 
ing up  in  this  woman's  sweet  azure  eyes,  she  thought  with 
all  the  noble,  senseless,  vain,  generous  obstinacy  of  youth 
thai  her  intuition  must  be  more  true  than  all  the  expe- 
rience of  others,  that  with  this  fair  bright  face  no  sin  could 

go! 

"You  little  fool!"  said  Coriolis  with  a  smile.  l'W  hy 
did  you  let  that  man  take  you  away  from  me  the  other 
day?" 

Viva  grew  very  pale;  but  she  gave  an  honest  answer. 

"He  says  you  are  very  wicked,  and  he  would  rather 
see  me  dead  than  like  you!" 

Coriolis  laughed  aloud;  a  silvery  musical  laughter, 
happy  as  a  child's. 

"He  is  complimentary — your  friend!  Well!  do  you 
believe  him  ?" 

18* 


210  TRICOTRIN, 

"I  ought,"  murmured  Viva,  wistfully  and  piteously. 
"But  I  cannot!     I  think  you  are  an  angel." 

Coriolis  laughed  afresh:  the  ingenuous  simplicity  of 
reply  did  not  touch  her  to  pity,  merely  to  amusement. 

"Think  so  if  you  like,"  she  said,  "and  I  will  be  your 
good  angel.  See  here,  little  one,  I  was  in  earnest  when 
I  offered  to  help  you  to  a  career.  I  can  make  you  the 
fashion  in  a  night,  and  I  will  do  it  if  you  have  any  sense, 
and  are  any  way  tractable.  You  have  a  splendid  head — 
I  tell  you  so — I  was  not  handsomer  myself,  I  verily  be- 
lieve. A  creature  with  a  face  like  yom*s  can  always  have 
the  world  at  her  feet.  But  not  if  she  be  shut  up  in  a  gar- 
ret where  no  eyes  see  her.  One  may  as  well  be  a  spar- 
row as  a  kingfisher,  if  one  never  glitters  in  the  sun  under 
men's  sight.  You  are  a  kingfisher.  Well,  come  and  fly 
in  the  light,  do  not  mope  in  a  wicker  cage.  I  will  take 
you  with  me,  and  show  you  my  world, — cornel" 

Viva,  white  to  her  lips,  and  trembling  sorely,  looked  up 
with  appealing  eyes. 

"Do  not  ask  me,  do  not  ask  me  1"  she  cried,  piteously. 
"  He  says  he  will  never  share  me  with  you,  that  he  will 
never  look  on  me  again  if  I  go  with  you  I  I  would  give 
all  the  world  if  I  had  it,  to  come — but  I  dare  not  grieve 
him;  I  dare  not!" 

"Pooh !"  cried  the  comedian.  "  What  are  women  made 
for  but  to  plague  the  souls  of  men  ?  It  is  our  empire,  that 
— of  course  he  likes  to  keep  you  in  prison,  all  jailers  love 
power." 

Viva  shook  her  head. 

"  Oh  no,  no !  You  do  not  know  him ;  he  is  so  good,  so 
generous,  so  gentle.  He  would  never  tell  me  anything 
but  for  my  happiness.  He  fears  you  because  he  thinks 
you  are  so  wicked,  and  he  says  that  you  broke  that  poor 
sailor's  heart  with  your  cruelty." 

Coriolis  set  her  delicate  teeth,  and  a  slight  flush  height- 
ened the  bloom  of  art  on  her  cheeks ;  but  she  smiled  with 
amused  negligence,  and  took  the  means  which  she  saw 
would  be  the  surest  to  blind  the  child's  instinct  of  right. 

"Your  friend  calumniates  me:  a  very  general  crime. 
It  is  the  penalty  we  pay  for  our  eminence,"  she  answered. 
"Sailors!  have  I  aught  to  do  with  common  seamen?    He 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  211 

errs  strangely:  but  wc  will  show  him  his  error.  Come  yon 
only  with  me,— just  for  these  next  i'ew  hours, — and  I  will 
make  a  princess  of  you.  He  shall  see  you  on  the  throne 
of  the  world;  for  is  not  the  applause  of  all  Paris  thai  ? 
and  he  will  thank  me, and  worship  me  as  your  best  friend. 
Look  you,  little  lady ; — ho  is  poor,  this  Tricotrin  of  yours ; 
you  are  a  great  tax  upon  him,  you  are  a  burden  that  serves 
him  in  nothing.     Have  you  ever  thought  of  that?" 

"  Never  !" — her  head  drooped,  the  remembrance  was  a 
deadly  blow  to  her  pride. 

"  But  it  is  the  truth  nevertheless.  Now,  if  you  will  trust 
me,  I  will  make  you  great,  applauded,  courted,  powerful, 
above  all,  independent.  And  what  is  there  so  sweet  as 
independence  ?  To  go  where  one  will,  to  do  as  one  chooses, 
to  have  to  ask  naught  except  one's  own  fancy,  to  scatter 
money  where  and  when  and  how  one  pleases!  Ah,  try 
that!  you  will  never  endure  dependence  after  it.  You 
have  a  proud  face :  how  can  you  bear  to  eat  the  bread  of 
charity  ?" 

The  child  was  stung  to  the  quick;  the  merciful  hand 
that  had  saved  and  sheltered  and  succored  her,  looked 
now  like  a  glove  of  iron,  whose  clasp  froze  her  blood. 

Coriolis  saw  the  pain  that  she  inflicted,  but  she  was 
pitiless  to  it. 

"You  are  nothing  but  a  young  pariah,  a  young  pauper 
now,"  she  continued.  "If  you  will  come  with  me  we 
will  change  all  that.  You  will  leap  at  a  bound  into  your 
proper  sphere;  you  will  become  rich  as  well  as  famous; 
think  then  how  you  can  repay  this  man  whom  you  love, 
whereas  now  you  are  only  a  care,  a  weight,  an  expense, 
an  onus  upon  him.  Have  you  remembered  all  this? 
Come  ! — just  to  see  for  two  hours  what  my  empire,  what, 
my  world,  an;  like.  You  shall  return  at  nightfall:  I  will 
send  you  home;  and  I  will  take  care  I  hat  he  bears  at  once 
that  you  are  with  me, — I  know  where  he  is.— and  he  will 
be  too  just,  I  trust,  when  he  sees  my  desire  to  serve  you, 
to  continue  to  think  such  false  and  Buch  evil  things  of 
me." 

"Oh,  yes!   I  know  well  thai    he  would,  if  he   would 
bul  believe !"  sighed  Viva;  and  a  beautiful  vision  ai 
before  her,  of  her  idol  purified  in  the  sighl  of  her  friend, 


212  TRICOTRIN, 

cleansed  of  calumny,  and  beloved  by  him  as  well  as  by 
herself,  in  all  the  radiance  of  that  new  world  for  which 
she  pined.  It  was  a  child's  vision,  all  glorious  with 
colors  never  seen  upon  earth,  generous  with  all  the  fa- 
naticism and  chivalry  of  youth,  vain  and  self-confident 
with  all  youth's  headstrong  bigotry  and  ignorance. 
Every  warning  had  died  out  from  her  remembrance. 
Coriolis  was  in  her  belief  at  once  the  noblest  empress, 
and  the  noblest  martyr,  that  the  world  could  hold. 

"You  shall  make  him  believe,"  said  her  temptress,  in- 
different what  she  averred,  so  that  she  became  successful 
in  her  caprice  of  divorcing  from  the  man  who  had  offended 
her,  and  aroused  her  hatred,  the  only  creature  that  was 
dear  to  him.  "  Come  with  me, — at  least  for  an  hour  or 
so?  You  are  no  baby,  that  you  must  have  no  will  of 
your  own.  You  are  old  enough  to  act  for  yourself;  and 
you  must  act  if  ever  you  desire  to  be  great.  The  years 
are  few  that  a  woman  reigns :  she  cannot  afford  to  waste 
one.  Come  with  me  ;  and  you  shall  see  what  my  life  is 
like.  I  will  give  you  a  glimpse  of  it  to-night.  I  will 
metamorphose  you  into  a  young  sovereign, — you  are 
nothing  now  but  a  little  peasant.  You  want  costume, 
jewels,  lace,  trailing  skirts,  everything !  All  those  em- 
bellishments are  to  a  creature  like  you,  as  its  gold  setting 
.is  to  an  emerald.  Without  them  you  may  be  a  gem  in- 
deed, but  you  are  unpolished,  and  will  glitter  in  no 
regalia.  Come!  you  cannot  be  afraid?  You  look  brave 
enough  to  take  your  own  way,  and  adhere  to  it.  If  you 
listen  to  him  you  will  pass  your  whole  life  in  an  attic  like 
the  one  that  imprisons  you  now;  you  will  never  be  seen 
except  by  some  clowns  on  a  farm,  or  some  boors  in  a 
tavern  ;  you  will  never  wear  anything  better  than  linen 
and  serge ;  you  will  always  go  on  foot  and  have  others 
splash  you  with  the  mud  of  their  chariot  wheels;  you 
will  always  sit  at  your  lattice  window  to  see  the  world's 
processions  pass  by  without  you ;  you  will  always  be  ob- 
scure, obscure  like  a  wretched  mole  under  a  tree,  when 
with  one  effort  of  will,  one  touch  of  sense,  you  might 
have  changed  all  that,  and  been  as  great  as  I  am.  Only 
think,  little  fool, — only  think  what  it  is  that  you  do  1" 

Viva's  color  had  changed  many  times  during  the  utter- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         213 

ance  of  the  actresses's  conjuration ;  her  breath  came  and 
went  rapidly ;  her  whole  form  was  tremulous  with  emo- 
tion and  desire.  "To  be  obscure!"  It  was  the  one  hell 
that  she  dreaded.  "To  be  great!"  it  was  the  one  heaven 
that  she  craved.  To  be  one  of  those  who  "  sat  at  their 
lattices  "  in  the  quietude  of  an  humble  home,  while  the 
great  pageantry  of  life  swept  on  below  her  window  with 
no  place  in  its  carnival  crowds  for  her,  no  voice  of  hers 
in  its  laughter,  no  banner  amid  its  proud  standards  up- 
held by  her  hand,  was  the  future  that  she  feared  with  a 
passionate  terror — the  terror  of  inborn  ambition,  of  pre- 
dominant vanity. 

With  a  single  bound  her  foot  was  on  the  carriage  steps, 
her  hand  upon  the  carriage  cushions. 

"I  will  come!"  she  cried,  breathlessly;  shame  was  on 
her,  and  all  the  consciousness  of  sin  against  the  one  to 
whom  her  lifelong  allegiance,  and  her  uttermost  sacrifice 
were  due.  She  felt  the  burning  horror  of  some  great 
wickedness  consume  her,  she  knew  that  she  wronged 
him  in  his  absence — a  crime  and  a  cowardice  in  one. 
But  the  temptress  prevailed  with  her  ;  the  desire  for  the 
unknown  conquered  her;  her  idolatry  of  this  one  forbid- 
den thing  was  stronger  with  her  than  all  ties  of  grati- 
tude. 

"  I  will  come!"  she  cried;  while  in  her  ear  there 
seemed  to  sound  the  words  that  he  had  spoken:  "  Share 
your  life  with  that  wanton,  I  will  not." 

'.'That  is  right,  that  is  wise,"  said  Coriolis,  with  a  smile, 
as  she  drew  her  up  into  the  carriage.  "  You  are  a  baby 
no  longer;  you  have  a  woman's  divine  right — Sell-Will.'' 

Viva  did  not  hear;  her  eyes  Celt  blind,  her  senses  grew 
dizzy,  her  ears  had  a  singing  sound  in  them.  She  could 
have  sobbed  aloud  with  remorse,  and  fear,  and  contri- 
tion; but  the  guilty  joy  of  victorious  rebellion,  the  guilty 
sweetness  of  unlawful  longing  near  to  its  fruition,  the 
guilty  liberty  of  selfremancipation,  were  in  her  vein-. 
and  there  was  too  much  in  her  of  the  leaven  of  Eve  for 
her  not  to  deliver  herself  up  to  their  usurpation.  She 
knew  herself  treacherous,  faithless,  cowardly ;  but  curi- 
osity, vanity,  and  the  desire  of  pleasure  conquered  her 
conscience.     She  elected,  as  millions  wiser  have  chosen, 


214  TRIC0TR1N, 

to  turn  her  face  aside  from  duty,  and  follow  where  her 
sorceress  led. 

^.The  equipage  dashed  off  with  her;  and  if  conscience 
spoke,  it  could  not  be  heard  in  the  noise  of  the  flashing, 
whirling,  azure  wheels  that  swept  her  down  white  roads 
and  under  green  avenues  through  the  gold  and  bronze 
gates  of  the  actress's  villa. 

Coriolis  was  not  without  her  kind  impulses;  she  was 
of  a  sunny  temper,  and  could  be  generous  when  to  be  so 
did  not  interfere  with  her  own  supreme  selfishness.  The 
rapt  adoring  face  of  the  child  had  attracted  her,  and  she 
had  felt  a  fancy  to  see  it  closer.  But  beside  these  she 
had  motives  less  innocent:  one,  on  whom  her  own 
charms  had  palled,  but  whose  contentment  and  patron- 
age were  essential  to  her,  had  also  seen  that  "flower-like 
face  "  under  its  scarlet  hood,  and  had  bade  her  let  him  see 
it  once  more,  and  more  closely.  And  Coriolis  was  one 
of  those  women  who  own  but  one  cultus  and  one  passion 
— those  of  gold. 

Yiva's  heart  was  beating  at  fever  heat  as  she  followed 
her  enchantress  through  the  exquisite  miniature  palace, 
in  which  the  stage- sovereign  reigned.  The  knowledge 
of  her  own  sin  in  coming  thither,  her  terror  for  the  rebuke 
her  flight  would  draw  down  on  her  head,  the  sharp  sting- 
ing sense  of  a  criminal  action  that  seemed  to  prick  her  like 
an  iron  goad,  served  yet,  in  some  fashion,  to  render  her 
ecstacy  in  her  own  transgression  wilder,  and  sweeter,  and 
stronger.  She  had  done  very  wrong,  she  knew  that ;  but 
she  had  rushed  forth  into  perilous  liberty ;  she  had  seized 
the  forbidden  fruit ;  she  had  entered  into  the  unknown 
land ;  she  had  too  much  of  the  spirit  of  Eve  in  her  not  to 
take  delight  in  her  daring  deed.  Moreover,  glancing  around 
on  all  the  luxurious  beauty  that  blinded  her,  she  thought: 
"She  was  unknown  and  penniless  once,  they  say;  why 
should  I  not  become  like  her,  too?" 

In  this  lay  Coriolis's  charm  for  her: — that  the  actress 
was  to  her  the  incarnation  of  all  that  may  be  accomplished 
by  the  force  of  beauty  alone,  against  every  antagonism  of 
origin  and  of  circumstance.  And  of  the  price  at  which 
such  accomplishment  was  attained,  Viva  knew  nothing. 

"  Come  in  hither,"  said  Coriolis,  leading  her  into  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         215 

daintiest  of  dressing-chambers,  that  made  the  child  think 
of  an  empty  bird's-nest  she  had  once  seen  in  an  elder 
bush,  all  silvered  over  with  glistening  hoar-frost  inside 
and  out. 

"  Let  us  look  at  you,"  pursued  her  hostess ;  and  she  re- 
morselessly pulled  off  the  red  cloak,  and  shook  down  all 
Viva's  hair,  talking  in  a  pleasant  little  murmur  like  a  sing- 
ing-mouse all  the  while  herself.  Coriolis  was  a  woman 
without  any  sort  of  mind;  she  was  almost  as  absolutely 
brainless  as  any  parroquet ;  but  she  knew  human  weak- 
nesses well,  and  she  knew  how  to  flatter  them  ;  and  thoseu 
two  forms  of  knowledge  suffice  to  conquer  a  child.  They 
suffice,  many  times,  to  vanquish  a  man. 

"  Have  you  sent  to  tell  him,  madame?"  asked  Viva,  a 
pang  of  conscience  stirring  amid  the  bliss  of  her  intox- 
icated vanity. 

"Your  friend!  oh  yes,"  said  Coriolis;  and  Viva  did 
not  know  that  the  daily  bread  of  such  women  as  this  lies 
in  falsehood. 

Coriolis  asked  her  all  her  history,  and  Viva  told  it ;  the 
sense  of  shame  at  her  costume,  and  her  homely  dwelling, 
striving  with  her  own  conviction  that  she  belonged  to 
some  lineage  of  special  though  hidden  splendor. 
Coriolis  heard  and  laughed. 

"Ah,  ha!  It  is  always  out  of  such  as  you  that  women 
like  me  are  made." 

"  Is  it?"  asked  the  child,  breathless  with  hope  and  joy, 
unwitting  the  frightful  truth  that  lav  in  tin;  words. 

"  Is  it?  Of  course  it  is!''  cried  her  temptress.  "The 
world  is  against  us  as  we  start,  and  we  have  out  revenge; 
we  trap  it,  and  strip  it,  and  make  it  our  laughing-stock 
and  our  golden-granary  both  in  one.  Y<>n  do  nol  under- 
stand? Pooh,  little  one!  You  will  learn  all  this  fast 
enough.  Oh,  life  is  a  pleasant  thing! — you  may  believe 
that.  Look  here!  since  I — since  I  came  on  the  Btage, 
have  I  not  lived  like  an  empress,  and  eaten  like  a  Stras- 
burgduek,  and  dressed  like  a  fashion-plate,  and  had  jewels 
that  outshone  the  duchess's  diamonds,  and  seen  all  the 
world  turn  after  me  as  I  drove  or  as  1  walked?  To  lie 
sure!  It  is  hard  work  at  Brst,  perhaps; — bul  not  tor  a 
beautiful  woman.     1  am  beautiful ;  you  will  be  so.     When 


216  TRICOTRIN, 

a  woman  can  look  at  her  face  in  the  mirror,  and  say 
honestly,  'I  am  handsomer  than  one  in  a  million/  it  is  as 
good  for  her  as  if  she  said,  '  I  am  born  to  a  crown.'  Bet- 
ter, indeed — because  it  is  a  much  gayer  time  that  waits 
for  her.     Do  you  see?" 

"  Yes,"-said  Viva,  drinking  the  poison  in  as  though  it 
were  the  water  of  life. 

Coriolis  believed  what  she  said.  To  a  creature  without 
soul  and  brain,  the  lusts  of  the  flesh,  and  the  joys  of  the 
palate,  and  of  the  vanity,  are  all  in  all. 

Coriolis  was  honest; — she  enjoyed. 

"Stay  an  instant,  and  you  shall  behold  yourself  as  you 
will  be,"  she  pursued,  as  she  threw  open  the  door  of  one 
of  her  cabinets,  and  pulled  out  laces,  and  silks,  and  velvets, 
and  gems,  till  the  girl's  eyes  were  dazzled. 

Viva  felt  none  of  the  prescience  which  usually  awakes 
in  innocence  that  is  brought  into  the  presence  of  vice. 
There  was  nothing  of  warning  mingled  with  the  allure- 
ments exercised  over  her.  She  had  no  idea  of  aught  of 
evil  or  of  clanger  in  her  sorceress ;  she  saw  an  exquisite 
Udng  with  a  cherub's  face,  and  the  power,  it  seemed  to 
her,  of  a  magician ;  and  every  one  of  Coriolis's  movements 
fascinated  her  with  a  sense  of  wonder,  attraction,  and  de- 
light. 

"  A"s  this  woman  was,  she  might  herself  be  one  clay  1" — 
this  was  the  one  thought  that  enchained  her. 

Laughing,  and  keeping  up  her  silvery,  mirthful  babble 
that  was  like  the  ring  of  sleigh-bells  over  snow,  Coriolis, 
who  had  much  of  the  infant  in  her  and  much  of  the  fool, 
and  who  had  as  many  caprices  as  a  spoiled  marmoset, 
loosened  and  tossed  aside  with  disdain  Viva's  white  linen 
dress,  and  threw  over  her  one  of  her  own  costly  trailing 
robes,  and  all  the  fantasy  of  a  jeweled  court  costume. 
Her  hands  were  quick  and  agile  at  such  transformation; 
and  she  changed  her  in  fifty  seconds  from  a  little  pictur- 
esque bohemian,  to  a  magnificent  young  beauty ;  while 
gazing  at  the  alteration  in  the  long  mirrors  that 
fronted  her,  touched  herself  to  know  if  she  were  awake, 
and  gazed,  with  parted  lips  and  throbbing  temples,  at  her 
own  apparition. 

"  There!"  cried  Coriolis,  laughing  more  and  more.  "Look 


THE  STORY  OF  A     WAIF  AND   ST  I!  AY.         217 

there!  See  what  Dress — the  god  and  the  devil  of  wo- 
men— can  do  for  you.  Dress — dress!  Why,  child,  your 
beauty,  without  the  aid  of  costume,  is  uothing  better  than 
the  pearl  before  it  leaves  the  oyster-shell.  Will  you  go 
back  to  your  shell,  you  pretty  pearl?  Not  if  1  know 
aught  of  your  heart." 

Viva  made  her  no  answer.  All  *he  self-love  of  Nar- 
cissus held  her  entranced. 

"  I  am  as  beautiful  as  you  !"  she  cried,  at  last,  aloud, 
in  ecstasy,  throwing  her  arms  above  her  head. 

Coriolis  turned  away,  with  a  cloud  for  once  over  her 
smiling  azure  eyes. 

"  More  so !"  she  said,  shortly,  with  the  impulses  of 
frankness  at  times  natural  to  her.  "More  sol  You 
have  what  I  have  lost  1" 

Viva  did  not  ask  what  this  was ; — she  did  not  inquire 
at  the  price  of  what  loss  this  celebrity,  and  this  wealth 
that  she  coveted,  had  been  acquired.  '  She  was  absorbed 
in  contemplation  of  herself.  The  actress  looked  at  her, 
and  smiled;  her  own  passing  emotions  had  swiftly  van- 
ished. 

"  How  it  runs  through  us  all !"  she  cried.  'With  all 
the  love  one  has.  one  never  loves  anything  like  Wie's  self! 
What  a  supreme  joy  it  is — that  knowing  one's  self  fair! 
But  there  is  a  still  greater  joy  than  thai  :  it  is  to  hear 
the  world  say  so.  Do  you  see,  you  charming  bagatelle, 
how  happy  you  are? — you  are  beautiful !  You  can  scoff 
at  all  the  Caesars;  their  power  is  nothing  to  yours.  To 
be  handsome  while  one  lives,  and  to  die  before  any  of 
that  fades:  if  one  can  do  this,  one  can  laugh  at  all  the 
priests  and  all  the  sages !" 

And  she  laughed  yet  again,  and  Viva  joined  in  her 
laugh.  The  airy  paganism  suited  the  child's  temper, 
and  Goriolis  was  that  mosl  persuasive  of  proselytizers— 
a  disciple  who  believed  implicitly  in  the  doctrines  she  in- 
culcated. To  he  fair  all  her  years  through,  and  to  dje 
before  any  of  "that"  waned  and  withered,  was  to  Corio- 
lis the  perfection  of  human  existence  ;  ami  the  only  form 
of  dread  that  ever  weighed  on  this  can  thought! 

mindless,  shameless  thing,  was  the  terror  thai    th<    day 
should  ever  emne  w  hen  she  Bhoulddash  her  hand  through 

19 


218  TRICOTRIN, 

her  mirror  in  despair  at  the  lusterless  eyes,  and  the  lined 
brow,  and  the  dulled  tresses  it  should  give  back  to  her 
vision. 

Viva  gave  a  deep  sigh  as  she  heard. 

"Ah  I"  she  murmured,  "if  I  could  only  have  ten  years 
of  a  life  like  yours  I  should  be  content!" 

"  To  resign  it  ?  Not  you.  Little  one, — when  we  have 
tasted  triumph  we  have  fed  on  a  fruit  of  Olympus,  that 
makes  all  mortal  food  flavorless,  and  leaves  us  with  a 
cruel  craving  appetite,  never  still  1" 

Coriolis  had  heard  a  poet  say  this :  and  used  the  an- 
swer, as  one  picturesque  and  likely  to  be  persuasive  to 
this  young  listener  and  tyro. 

"What  matter!"  cried  Viva,  in  the  magnificent  reck- 
lessness of  ignorance.  "  I  would  rather  taste  it  once 
and  hunger  forever,  than  never  know  its  flavor  all  the 
days  of  my  life  !" 

Coriolis,  with  a  curious  fancy  for  this  daring,  vain, 
lovely  creature,  who  made  her  think  of  her  own  child- 
hood, laid  both  hands  on  Viva's  shoulder,  and  looked  at 
her  with  a  gaze  that  was  more  earnest  than  her  volatile, 
sparkling,  wandering  eyes  had  ever  given. 

"Are  jovl  too  good  for  it  ?"  she  murmured  to  herself. 
"  No.  Not  a  whit.  You  are  just  what  I  was  ; — cleverer 
perhaps,  and  of  more  wit,  but  just  like  me.  You  would 
only  break  an  honest  man's  heart,  if  you  were  to  begin 
with  one:  it  is  better  to  commence  as  you  will  end,  with 
pillaging  fools  and  knaves.  Pooh !  you  don't  under- 
stand," she  cried  aloud,  with  all  her  gayety.  "  You  are 
a  little  simpleton.  Listen  ;  I  will  put  you  on  the  stage. 
You  will  have  talent,  I  can  see.  If  you  have  not,  it  will 
matter  nothing.  Walk  well,  dress  superbly,  do  strange 
things — the  odder  the  better,  and  with  your  features  you 
can  make  your  fortune,  though  you  can  say  no  more  than 
a  squeaking  doll  at  a  fair." 

"  But  I  want  to  be  great!"  cried  Viva,  dissatisfied  with 
her  future  prospects. 

"  Nonsense  1  When  a  woman  passes  down  through  a 
crowd,  and  the  people  look  back  after  her  and  call  out, 
'  that  is  she  /'  has  she  not  greatness,  the  best  greatness  ? 
Some  Latin  idiot  says,  they    have    told  me,  that  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         219 

'pointing  finger'  is  no  sure  sign  we  are  great — Ridicu- 
lous! When  it  points  our  way  we  may  be  pretty  sure 
we  are  on  the  highroad  to  fame.  Besides  'great,  great, 
great !'  What  does  that  matter  ?  .  What  matters  in  this 
world  is  to  eat  and  drink  well,  and  dance,  and  play,  and 
laugh,  and  see  others  perish  in  envy  of  us,  and  have 
more  gold  than  we  can  take  up  in  both  our  hands,  and 
enjoy  ourselves  while  we  are  living.  That  is  what 
matters.  And  no  one  can  do  all  those  better  than  a 
beautiful  woman.  Now  go  you  in  there,  and  wait  till 
I  dome  to  you.     I  will  not  be  long." 

She  pushed  Viva  gently  through  a  door  that  opened 
into  a  small  cabinet,  and  closed  the  door  upon  her.  It 
had  been  very  late  in  the  day  when  she  had  met  the  ac- 
tress ;  it  was  now  evening  ;  the  little  chamber  was  softly 
lit,  and  full  of  the  perfume  of  flowers  and  the  luxuries  of 
wealth.  Viva  dropped  down  on  a  couch,  and  wondered 
whether  she  were  awake  or  dreaming;  a  sense  of  fear 
and  a  great  remorse  stole  on  her;  she  knew  she  had 
done  wickedly,  and  a  vague,  indefinable  dread  of  some 
unknown  evil  came  over  her.  She  began  to  grieve  for 
her  disobedience,  and  to  longtobe  safe  in  (he  little  attic 
with  Tricotrin.  What  would  he  say!  what  would  he 
think! 

Her  throat  swelled  ;  she  felt  as  if  she  must  scream  out 
loud;  even  the  elegance  and  the  fragrance  of  the  place 
added  to  its  strangeness  and  her  own  fears: — instinct- 
ively her  hand  wandered  over  the  rich  silk  of  her  robe, 
and  her  eyes  watched  the  glisten  of  its  gold  embroideries, 
seeking  consolation  in  these.  They  brought  a  certain 
solace. 

"If  I  could  only  wear  1  hem  always  1"  she  thoughl  :  and 
the  vision  of  herself  upon  the  stage,  before  the  world,  cov- 
ered with  flowers,  welcomed  with  tumults  of  applause,  in- 
toxicating multitudes  with  her  grace  and  her  glance  in  all 
the  triumph  thai  she  had  seen  attained  by  Coriolis,  ar  ise 
before  her,  and  numbed  all  her  repentance. 

The  desire  to  be  "great"  possessed  her:  when  thai  in- 
satiate passion  enters  a  living  soul,  be  it  the  soul  of  a  wo- 
man-child dreaming  of  a  coquette's  conquests,  or  a  crowned 
hero  craving  for  a  new  world,  it  becomes  blind  to  all  i  Ise. 


220  TRICOTRIN, 

Moral  death  falls  on  it ;  and  any  sin  looks  sweet  that  takes 
it  nearer  to  its  goal.  It  is  a  passion  that  generates  at 
once  all  the  loftiest  and  all  the  vilest  things,  which,  be- 
tween them,  ennoble  and  corrupt  the  world ;  even  as  heat 
generates  at  once  the  harvest  and  the  maggot,  the  purpling 
vine  and  the  lice  that  devour  it.  It  is  a  passion  without 
which  the  world  would  decay  in  darkness,  as  it  would  do 
without  heat;  yet  to  which,  as  to  heat,  all  its  filthiest 
corruption  is  due. 

"I  shall  be  great!"  thought  Viva,  to  whom  the  great- 
ness of  the  stage  looked  as  the  greatness  of  an  empire: 
and  remorse  ceased  to  touch  her.  They  must  suffer  that 
she  might  ascend: — this  was  the  reckless  reasoning  of  the 
human  and  female  egotism  within  her. 

A  flood  of  light  startled  her  as  the  door  was  flung  open 
and  Coriolis  entered ;  freshly  arrayed,  and  with  her  fair 
feathery  hair  lying  lightly  on  her  shoulders,  diademed 
with  flowers  and  with  gems.  She  floated  to  the  child 
with  her  soft  swift  undulating  movement — the  movement 
of  the  born  alm&h,  in  whom  motion  is  poetry,  and  in 
whose  limbs  lies  eloquence. 

"Thou  art  in  the  twilight,  little  one!"  she  cried,  using 
the  familiar  and  caressing  "thou"  for  the  first  time. 
"Come; — I  have  a  better  light  for  thee  than  that;  and 
one  in  which  there  are  eager  eyes  to  behold  thee.     Come!" 

"  Where  ?"  asked  the  tempted  one,  with  wistful  wonder. 

Coriolis  smiled  a  little  bitterly. 

"Hush!     We  never  ask  'where'  in  our  world, 

On  va  oii  va  toute  chose 
Ou  va  le  laurier  et  la  rose!" 

And  she  drew  the  girl  from  the  chamber,  with  her  soft, 
white,  dimpled  hand  clasped  on  Viva  as  though  it  were 
a  glove  of  steel. 

The  roses  had  all  cankers  at  their  cores,  and  poisoned 
the  lips  that  kissed  them;  the  laurels  were  all  twined  in 
with  thorns,  which  drew  blood  from  the  brows  that  they 
wreathed: — what  of  that?  Cankerless  roses  die  also  ;  and 
there  are  no  laurels  whose  fruit  is  sweet. 

She  led  the  child  in  its  ignorance  to  perdition :  but  she 
did  not  think  so:   vice  was  fair  in  her  own  sight,  and  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WATF  AND   STRAY.         221 

devil  of  gold  was  her  god ; — a  good  god  who  enriched 
those  that  served  him:  six'  thought  she  could  do  no  better 
than  bring  a  neophyte  to  believe  in  her  cultus,  and-  serve 
in  her  temple. 

"Enjoy — enjoy — enjoy,"  her  heart  had  whispered  in 
her  own  childhood,  when  she  had  sat  on  the  lonely  sea- 
shore and  longed  for  a  world  that  was  unknown:  and  she 
had  enjoyed,  and  it  seemed  well  to  her  still,  and  the  sole 
thing  that  it  was  worth  while  for  a  mortal  to  do.  In 
tossing  the  fruit  of  desire  into  the  child's  young  bosom, 
she  only  gave  that  which  had  been  luxuries  to  her  own 
lips,  and  which  seemed  to  her  still  the  one  apple  of  life 
worth  the  plucking.  She  was  wicked,  because  things  all 
sense  and  no  soul  must  be  so;  but  she  was  honest,  and 
she  only  led  where  she  herself  had  ever  gone,  with  tune- 
ful swift  feet,  rejoicing. 

"Evil,  he  thou  my  good,"  she  had  said,  in  her  fair,  wan- 
ton, indolent,  careless  fashion,  and  evil  had  been  her  good; 
it  had  served  her  well,  heaped  wealth  on  her,  made  the 
air  she  lived  in  full  of  laughter,  and  the  lovers  she  sought 
facile  to  their  yoke,  and  the  years  that  flew  over  her  head, 
sunlit  and  short  and  radiant  with  mirth.  Evil  had  been 
prodigal  of  gilts  and  graces  to  her,  and  had  recompensed 
her  as  kings  recompense;  she  deemed  that  there  was  no 
better  master  upon  earth.  Virtue  was  a  uiggard  tyrant, 
who  left  his  servitors  to  starve:  but  Evil  was  a  prince, 
who  scattered  gold  and  flowers  with  both  hand-. 

There  be  those  who  in  their  gilded  shame  feel  the 
shrinking  scornful  passion,  at  their  own  fall,  of  the  poet's 
Egyptian  harlot, — 

"  What  is  Lite  without  Honor? 
And  what  c;>n  the  lit'''  thai  I  live 
Q-ive  to  Hi'-  I  shall  care  to  continue,  not  caring  for  aught  it  can 

give? 
I,  despising  the  fools  that  despise  me, — a  plaything  not  pleasing 

m\  self, 
Whose  liiv  for  tin'  pelf  that  maintains  it,  must  sell  what  is  paid 

Hot     l'\      ( 

And  the  fancies  of  men  change.     An. I  bitterly  bought  i-  the 

bread  that  I  eat. 
For,  though  purchased  with    body  and   spirit,  when  purchased, 

't  is  yet  all  un.-weet." 

19* 


222  TRICOTRIN, 

But  there  be  also  many  others  in  whom  this  sting  of 
scorn  is  dead,  this  ache  of  conscience  is  lulled  to  rest  by 
the  opiates  of  vanity  and  of  pleasure;  there  be  those  to 
whom  the  life  that  they  lead  looks  the  best  life,  and  to 
whom  license  is  precious,  to  whom  enjoyment  is  the  Alpha 
and  Omega  of  existence,  and  to  whom  the  chime  of  golden 
coinage  is  the  only  music  of  the  spheres. 

And  Coriolis  was  one  of  these.  She  had  been  very 
weary,  and  fretful  as  a  caged  bird,  in  innocence ;  in  vice 
she  rejoiced  and  was  free !  A  future  might  come  indeed 
when  she  would  perish  of  famine  on  the  stones  of  the 
streets: — what  of  that?  They  must  have  some  soul  in 
them  who  dread  a  future;  and  there  was  no  soul  in  this 
gay  airy  thing,  though  her  dancing  feet  trod  the  souls  of 
men  down  and  killed  them. 

Like  Dorat  she  had  gathered  every  flower  except  the 
Immortelle  :  and  the  one  that  she  had  passed  over  she 
never  missed. 

Immortality  ! — the  word  is  ridiculous  named  in  the  same 
breath  with  such  things  as  Coriolis;  what  has  eternity  to 
do  with  women  such  as  this,  too  foul  for  heaven  and  too 
frail  for  hell  ?- 

She  led  the  child  through  dusky  fragrant  passages,  aro- 
matic in  odor,  with  the  sheen  of  silk  and  satin  glimmering 
in  the  shadow  from  their  walls. 

Then  she  drew  back,  and  sweeping  aside  a  curtain  that 
hung  before  an  arched  and  opened  door,  motioned  to  Viva 
to  pass  within  before  her. 

It  was  the  entrance  to  a  banqueting-room. 

Viva,  touched  for  the  first  time  with  a  chill  of  timidity, 
a  throb  of  fear,  hung  back,  wistful  yet  longing. 

Through  the  arch  of  the  gilded  portal  there  were  a 
blaze  of  light,  a  glisten  of  rose  color,  a  splendor  of  gold,  a 
wilderness  of  flowers,  an  odor  of  wines  and  spices  and 
burnt  incense,  a  gay  laughter  from  young  men's  throats, 
that  all  blazed  and  whirled  together  upon  the  girl's  won- 
dering eyes  and  ears. 

She  paused,  hesitating  and  half  frightened  before  that 
paradise  of  forbidden  evil. 

"Is  it  a  temple?"  she  murmured  breathlessly. 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  223 

Coriolis  laughed  ;  a  more  cruel  laugh  than  any  that  had 
rung  from  her  mocking  lips. 

"A  temple  1  yes  1     Go  in, — and  worship  our  god." 
And  she  thrust  the  child  through  the  opening. 


CHAPTER  XX. 


It  was  toward  the  close  of  the  day  when  Tricotrin  re- 
turned. 

He  was  tired  out,  heated,  exhausted ;  as  his  habit  was 
when  in  pain,  he  had  wandered  far,  walking  on  and  on 
through  the  open  country,  seeking  solitude  on  the  same 
impulse  as  the  stricken  stag.  In  the  red  woods  of  the 
late  autumn,  in  the  wide  fields,  with  their  arc  of  purple 
angry  sky,  in  the  bleak  plains  swept  by  equinoctial  gales, 
he  could  breathe,  think,  resolve,  kill  passion  in  him,  and 
call  back  his  strength.  In  j<>y,  this  Arab  little  loved  the 
oppression  of  cities,  the  pent  confines  of  chambers,  the 
close  atmosphere  of  crowded  roof's ;  in  suffering,  t  hey  mad- 
dened him.  They  were  like  t  he  bars  of  his  den  to  a  caged 
lion  whom  his  jailers  wound  and  taunt. 

By  evening-fall  he  returned;  the  linnet  had  ceased  to 
sing  under  its  plume  of  lime;  the  sunbeams  had  cea 
to  play  through  the  little  brown  dusky  street  ;  in  the  door- 
way stood  the  woman  of  the  house  looking  up  and  down, 
with  her  head  op  one  side  like  a  robin's,  and  the  bright 
dress  of  her  native  Basque  province  glowing  in  the  shade 
like  a  poppy  growing  out  of  a  pile  of  black  timber  in  a 
wood-yard. 

"Is  the  child  not  with  you?"  she  cried,  as  he  drew 
near. 

He  lifted  his  head  wearily. 

"  With  me?     No.     I  left  her  at  home." 

Mere  Rose  turned  pale  under  her  ruddy  southern  skin. 

"Left  her  here!  Where  is  she  then  ?  She  is  not  gone 
with  the  Mevert — that  I  know — we  have  not  seen  her 


224  TRICOTRIN, 

all  the  last  half  of  the  day,  and  we  made  certain  that  you 
had  taken  her." 

He  said  nothing,  but  pushed  past  her  and  sprang  up 
the  staircase. 

He  threw  door  after  door  open,  the  house  ringing  with 
his  voice  as  he  called  her  name  aloud  from  cellar  to  attic; 
— there  was  no  answer.  Her  books,  her  bonbons,  her 
knot  of  autumn  daisies,  lay  on  the  table  in  the  little  cham- 
ber; but  of  Viva  there  was  no  trace. 

The  woman,  joined  by  two  or  three  of  her  neighbors, 
stood  listening  below,  frightened  and  bewildered.  They 
had  no  love  for  this  fantastic  child,  "la  demoiselle,"  as 
they  called  her  ironically,  who  held  herself  so  haughtily 
with  so  much  airy  scorn  above  them  and  theirs ;  and  who 
either  sat  aloft  in  her  casement  like  a  framed  picture,  or 
glittered  out  in  the  sun,  with  the  negligent  grace  of  some 
elfin  thing  far  too  good  for  the  earthly  shrine  that  inclosed 
her.  But  they  loved  Tricotrin  with  the  faithful  impas- 
sioned love  that  all  the  populace  gave  him ;  and  for  his 
trouble  they  sorrowed  themselves. 

They  felt  a  certain  fear  of  the  look  on  his  face  as  he 
descended  the  stairs  and  came  to  them. 

"  When  saw  you  her  last  ?"  he  asked  them. 

They  had  seen  her  at  the  doorway  some  hour  in  the 
afternoon,  they  told  him ;  they  could  not  be  sure  of  the 
time;  they  were  busy  people,  occupied  with  their  wash- 
ing, their  ironing,  their  cooking,  their  flower-making,  their 
sweetmeat-baking ;  they  had  had  no  time  to  take  further 
note. 

The  grisette,  sewing  still  by  the  fast  fading  light  at  her 
lattice,  looked  down;  moved  by  that  sympathy  which 
makes  strangers  become  in  a  second  as  friends  of  a  life- 
time. 

"You  ask  for  the  child?"  she  said  to  him.  "I  can  tell 
you, — the  little  one  sat  there  on  the  doorstep  as  four 
o'clock  sounded;  a  little  page/a  creature  all  red  and  gold, 
came  up  to  her  and  took  her  away  They  went  together 
down  the  passage  to  that  first  corner  yonder;  and  after 
a  little  while  I  heard  the  noise  of  fast  wheels  and  the 
trotting  of  horses.  She  is  gone, — that  I  know, — for  she 
never  came  back  to  the  doorway." 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRA  V.         225 

Then,  without  interest  to  see  how  her  news  was  taken, 
she  bent  again  over  her  work,  to  save  the  few  precious 
moments  of  dying  light;  rocking  the  wooden  cradle  with 
her  foot,  and  coughing,  painfully,  a  short  hard  feverish 
cough.  A  month  before  she  had  sung,  as  blithely  as  the 
linnet  under  his  lime-bough,  the  mischievous  students' 
wine-songs  that  had  served  her  as  cradle-ballads. 

Tricotrin  heard:  —  and  he  drew  a  deep  shuddering 
breath,  as  a  soldier  will  do  when  the  bullets  have  struck 
him. 

"It  is  Coriolis."  he  said  in  his  throat, — then  without 
another  word  ho  swept  the  eager  women  aside,  and  passed 
down  the  street  with  the  speed  of  the  wind. 

At  the  turn  of  the  alley  into  the  breadth  of  the  street 
adjoining  there  came  at  a  quick  pace  a  string  of  young 
horses:  they  were  from  Normandy,  and  were  wild  and 
strong,  and,  being  young,  fleet  of  foot. 

He  knew  the  man  who  rode  their  leader;  a  sturdy  Nor- 
man breeder  of  cattle; — they  had  been  friends  for  many 
a  year,  smoking  and  sauntering  and  laughing  together, 
under  the  Bpring-blooming  apple  orchards  of  the  pleasant 
farm-country. 

Tricotrin  caught  at  the  rope  bridle  of  one  of  the  fore- 
most colts. 

"Will  you  lend  him  to  me?"  he  asked,  breathlessly. 
"I  am  in  sore  need  of  haste:   he  shall  lie  back  bj  dawn.'' 

"Take  him!"  cried  the  Norman,  startled,  like  the  wo- 
men, by  the  look  which  he  saw  on  a  lace  that  he  had 
never  beheld  before  clouded  with  aimht  of  care.  "Take 
him;  and  keep  him  as  Ion ^  as  you  need; — I  am  at  my 
old  stables;  you  will  bring  him  there." 

"Surely," — he  stayed  for  no  more  words,  bul  threw 
himself  across  the  colt's  hare  hack,  and  urged  it  at  a 
stretching  gallop  through  the  crooked  streets  of  the  quarter. 

The  young  horse,  nothing  loth  to  he  free  of  the  string, 
Hew  fast  wit  hoiit  urging. 

Tricotrin  turned  its  head  straight  southward,  to  where 
the  actress  rested  in  her  gilded  harbor,  rich  and  soft  with 
the  plunder  of  many  lofty  galleons  that  had  .-truck  flag 
and  foundered  under  the  pirate'.-  prow. 

lie  had  spent   no  time  in  speech;    he  had  wasted  1 1 « * t  a 


226  TRICOTRIN, 

single  moment  in  self-abandonment  to  the  anguish  that 
possessed  him.  But  as  he  rode  his  heart  was  a  hell 
within  him:  he  was  not  alone  a  man  who  went  to  rescue 
from  his  spoilers  a  child  that  he  cherished,  he  was  a  lover 
who  went  to  save  from  dishonor  the  creature  that  he 
idolized. 

And  he  knew  that  he  might  reach — too  late. 

The  Norman  colt,  with  its  rough  mane  flying  and  its 
bright  eyes  full  of  flame,  asked  no  more  welcome  task  than 
to  be  let  loose  to  its  fullest  speed,  as  though  it  were  once 
again  at  play  in  its  own  native  pastures.  Buildings  and 
throngs,  and  all  the  varicolored  evening  life  of  the  city 
were  passed  by  as  fast  as  a  summer  breeze  sweeps  by 
over  the  corn ;  yet  night  was  down  ere  he  reached  the 
outlying  woods  and  gardens  amid  which  the  toy-palace 
of  Coriolis  reared  its  gilded  cupolas  and  shining  roofs. 

The  colt  was  panting  and  tired  out  by  the  pace  at  which 
it  had  been  ridden ;  it  stood  passively  while  he  flung  him- 
self from  its  back  and  tied  the  halter  to  the  post  of  an 
entrance  gate.  The  gates  were  unfastened ;  he  passed 
through  them,  and  up  the  grounds  of  the  villa,  strewed 
with  the  damp  odorous  leaves  of  the  late  autumn.  Lights 
glistened  through  the  interstices  of  the  shutters  all  over 
the  frontage  of  the  dainty  dwelling,  bosomed  in  its  shrubs 
and  trees. 

He  cursed  it  as  he  looked. 

Yice  lived  like  this,  while  innocence  died  daily  in  the 
streets  I 

As  the  velvet  curtain  fell  behind  her,  Viva  found  her- 
self within  the  chamber. 

The  fear  died  away  in  her;  curiosity,  wonder,  eager- 
ness, a  thrill  of  triumph  and  a  throe  of  delight  at  her  own 
rebellion  all  conquered  it,  and  were  stronger  than  the  in- 
stinctive and  nameless  dread  within  her  a  moment  earlier. 

Six  or  eight  young  men  all  rose  and  all  turned  their 
eyes  on  her,  and  all  came  to  her  with  words  of  admiring 
greeting,  which  fell  in  a  confused  but  delicious  sense  of 
homage  on  her  ear.  She  shrank  back  with  all  a  child's 
innocent  shyness;  she  went  forward  with  all  a  coquette's 
innate  impulses. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         227 

She  know  that  she  looked  very  lovely;  she  know  that 
this  exquisite  sorceress  at  her  side  was  content  to  be 
eclipsed  by  herself;  all  the  weakest  and  the  worst  things 
other  nature  were  appealed  to  and  inflamed.  The  room 
whirled  round  her  in  a  blaze  of  color;  the  heavy  perfume 
on  its  air  seemed  to  float  round  her  in  clouds  of  odor ;  the 
dazzle  of  the  jewels  and  the  precious  metals  on  the  ban- 
queting table  looked  to  her  like  the  riches  of  an  India — 
she  drew  a  deep  breath,  and  laughed  a  little  soft  quiver- 
ing wondering  laugh,  that  yet  had  half  a  sob  in  it. 

This  was  the  world  at  last  then. 

The  world! — this  paradise  of  brilliant  hues,  and  price- 
less gems,  and  subtle  perfumes,  and  honeyed  words,  and 
ardent  adoring  eyes!  The  world! — ah  !  how  she  mar- 
veled that  there  could  be  found  lives  holy  enough  to  sigh 
for  heaven  if  this  elyshim  were  to  be  found  od  earthl 

She  had  never  a  clear  memory  of  all  that  followed  on 
her  entrance  into  that  enchanted  room.  All  distinct  re- 
membrance was  lost  in  a  chaos  of  splendid  images.  For 
splendid  this  false  glitter,  this  glory  of  meretricious  color, 
this  joyless  joy,  this  hackneyed  revelry,  looked  to  the 
youthful  eyes  which  only  saw  its  surface.  For  Viva, 
reared  amid  the  truth  and  the  beauty  of  nature  in  inno- 
cent solitude,  was  too  essentially  a  slave  to  the  feminine 
soul  within  her  to  be  poet  enough  to  recoil  from  the  false- 
hood of  pleasure,  poet  enough  to  cling  to  the  severity  and 
simplicity  of  nature.  The  higher  life  escaped, — the  lower 
allured  her.  It  was  the  beaten-oul  gold  of  the  jeweler's 
laboratory, which  was  still  far  more  beautiful  in  her  sight 
than  the  sun-fed  lilies  and  lilacs  of  the  spring. 

She  had  a  confused  knowledge  of  being  led  to  the  firsl 
seat  at  the  table  under  the  dome  of  light,  that  seemed  to 
her  like  the  noontide  sun.  Of  seeing  some  handsome 
courtly  faces  bent  toward  her  with  that  delighl  in  their 
regard  which  she  already  knew  so  well  as  the  tribute  to 
her  charms.     Of  hearing  such  flattery  t  hal  her  brain  grew 

dizzy  with  it,  and  she  fell  stupefied, like  a  l> rercloyed 

with  honey.  Of  catching  the  vision  of  herself  repeated 
on  every  side,  in  mirrors,  till  she  saw  that  one  best-loved 
image  wherever  her  eyes  turned.  Of  being  moved  to  her 
gayest,  words  and  brightest  laughter,  till  the  audience  an- 


228  TRICOTRIN, 

plauded  her  idlest  phrase  as  wit,  and  she  felt  herself  a 
sovereign,  whose  words  were  precious,  as  pearls  and  dia- 
monds. Of  tasting  strange  fruits,  and  wondrous  confec- 
tions, and  wines  that  shone  like  so  much  sunbeam,  till  she 
seemed  to  float  on  air  and  to  lose  all  sense  of  earth,  and 
to  dream  that  she  was  among  the  gods  of  the  Greek  fable. 

She  was  drinking  in  poison — the  poison  of  a  hideous 
evil — with  her  lips,  and  ears,  and  eyes,  and  thoughts; 
but  she  did  not  know  it;  she  was  happy,  she  was  victo- 
rious, she  was  exultant,  and  she  was  too  innocent  to  be 
conscious  that  sin  was  encircling  her  on  every  side. 

They  were  heedful  not  to  affright  her,  but  only  to  al- 
lure ;  they  wreathed  the  death's  head  in  summer  flowers 
for  her;  they  drew  her  to  the  abyss  with  sweet  careless 
joyous  music;  they  killed  her  with  a  poisoned  rose.  And 
she  did  not  know ;  she  was  still  a  child,  and  still  only 
happy. 

As  she  reigned  there  proudly  and  joyously,  the  actress 
Coriolis  looked  at  her  once  with  a  throb  of  remorse  in  her 
dead  conscience  ;  but  she  hunted  it  away  as  it  arose. 

"Pshaw!"  she  murmured.  "What  matter?  A  little 
earlier? — a  little  later?  Things  like  her  are  made  to 
slaughter  and  to  plunder.  She  would  end  like  me — it  is 
better  to  begin  so.  She  will  thank  me  one  day  that  she 
has  wasted  none  of  the  years  of  her  youth!" 

As  she  thus  thought,  a  door  at  the  farther  end  of  the 
chamber  opened;  through  it,  facing  her  and  behind  the 
child,  came  softly  the  graceful,  slender  shape  of  a  hand- 
some boy — a  boy  with  dark  eyes  that  gleamed  with  malice 
and  triumph. 

He  stole  gently  across  the  room  and  up  to  Yiva,  and 
as  gently  his  arm  stole  round  her  fair  throat,  and  his  lips 
brushed  her  curls. 

"Yiva!"  he  whispered,  "I  have  thee  at  last — oh,  my 
truant !  And  here  are  the  deathless  roses,  the  fairy  pa- 
geants, the  wines  of  the  gods,  that  I  promised  thee!" 

With  a  scream,  as  though  a  snake  had  touched  her,  she 
sprang  to  her  feet. 

The  spell  on  her  was  broken;  the  netted  dove  soared 
from  the  snare. 

"Let  me  go  !"   she  cried  aloud,  as  though  by  some  in- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRA  V.         229 

stinct  the  full  sense  of  her  peril  flashed  on  her.  "  Let  me 
go  1  Oh,  how  vile  I  have  been  to  come  here!  It  is  you ! 
— you  whom  he  forbade  me  ever  to  sec,  ever  to  speak  to, 
ever  to  think  of  again;  you  who  gave  me  your  toys,  and 
deemed  me  some  peasant  girl  you  could  kiss  at  your  fancy  ! 
It  is  you!  How  could  I  tell  it?  How  could  I  dream  it  ? 
Let  me  go — let  me  go!  I  have  sinned  once  against  him; 
I  will  not  disobey  him  again — never  again,  never,  never!" 

The  childlike  words  rang  out  loudly  through  the  cham- 
ber; she  stood  with  her  face  flushed,  scarlet  with  rage, 
and  shame,  and  outraged  pride;  her  eyes  flashing  with 
scorn  on  her  boy-lover ;  her  mouth  trembling  with  grief 
for  her  own  disobedience. 

In  an  instant,  by  the  voice  of  her  young  Faust,  the 
full  knowledge  of  her  own  error  had  burst  on  her,  piercing 
through  the  mists  of  vanity,  and  delight,  and  wonder,  and 
intoxicated  triumph. 

She  stretched  her  hands  out  in  a  piteous  appeal  to 
Coriolis. 

"Oh,  take  me  back  to  him;  take  me  back.  You  said 
you  would;  and  I  feel  so  frightenedl" 

Coriolis  looked  at  her,  and  laughed. 

The  devil  is  never  so  brutal  as  when  he  comes  into  a 
woman's  form. 

The  cold,  cruel,  mocking  laugh  stung  all  the  child's 
proud  spirit  into  life. 

"Oh,  I  see  now!"  she  cried  out,  in  a  mortal  anguish 
that  no  man  there  heard  unmoved.  "I  see  now  how  true 
lie  was — how  wicked  you  are!  You  laugh! — you  laugh 
because  you  have  made  me  disobey  him.  It  is  Satan 
who  laughs  just  so  when  men  disobey  God.  oh  how 
mad  1  was  to  hearken  to  you! — oh,  take  me  back,  take  me 
back!  Has  not  one  of  you  all  a  heart  to  pity  me?  I 
never  meant  to  grieve  him!  1  only  meant  to  grow  great, 
and  to  pleasure  him,  and  to  he  his  glory.  And  I  loved 
her  so — t  hat  woman  !" 

Her  voice  died  in  a  sob.  It  was  a  bitter  suffering  to 
her,  the  fall  of  her  sovereign,  the  death  of  her  ideal. 

Her  young  lover  smiled.  . 

"  Love  her  still  1"  he  murmured.  "What  is  her  guilt? 
— to  have  brought  you  to  met" 

20 


230  TRICOTRIN, 

He  stooped  as  he  spoke,  and  sought  to  draw  her  into 
his  embrace, — the  door  was  burst  open,  the  curtain  dashed 
aside,  a  strong  hand  fell  on  him  and  forced  him  from  her, 
and  tossed  him  like  a  broken  bough  across  the  chamber. 

With  a  shriek  of  joy  she  threw  herself  into  the  arms  of 
her  savior. 

The  voice  of  Tricotrin  rang  like  a  trumpet-call  through 
the  silence. 

"  What! — had  men  need  to  dream  of  a  Devil  when  the 
world  held  Woman!" 

Holding  her  to  him  with  both  arms  he  faced  the  baffled 
and  silence-stricken  revelers ;  and  a  great  awe  fell  upon 
them,  such  as  fell  on  the  dissolute  patrician  mob  of  Rome 
before  the  passion  of  Virginius. 

"One  cannot  kill  such  things  as  you — the  vilest  things 
that  breathe!"  he  cried,  as  his  eyes  blazed  upon  Coriolis. 
"You  murder — body  and  soul! — and  yet  we  must  let  ye 
go  free  because  ye  are  women,  because  ye  can  crouch  and 
shelter  behind  the  shield  of  the  sex  that  ye  outrage !  God! 
if  I  set  my  heel  on  your  throat  I  should  do  no  more  guilt 
than  if  I  strangled  the  life  from  an  adder.  Yet  I  must 
leave  you  free  because  you  are  'woman'! — because  you 
are  the  sole  thing  living  on  earth  that  can  slaughter  yet 
break  no  law ;  that  can  slay  yet  be  left  to  smile  on ;  that 
can  make  men  curse  the  mothers  that  bore  them,  yet  be 
safe  in  the  safety  of  feebleness ;  the  only  thing  living  on 
earth  that  has  the  strength  of  the  giant  for  crime,  and  the 
weakness  of  the  coward  for  shelter.  Had  Israel  no  courte- 
sans in  her  camps,  that,  in  the  parables  of  her  Scriptures, 
she  made  the  chief  leader  of  hell  a  male  creature  ?" 

A  dead  stillness  followed  on  the  scathing  fury  of  his 
words. 

The  banqueters  drew  aside,  and  gathered  together, 
and  left  the  woman  alone. 

Men  feast  with  Coriolis,  but  none  will  fight  for  her. 

They  drain  her  wine-cups,  for  their  own  gold  fills  them; 
but  no  sword  leaps  from  its  scabbard  for  her  sake. 

In  pleasure  she  has  many  followers ;  in  need  she  is 
ever  alone. 

Then  with  hands  that  were,  for  that  one  time  alone, 
ungentle  to  the  child  he  loved,  he  tore  from  off  her  the 


* 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         231 

jewels,  the  flowers,  the  laces  of  her  festal  robes,  and  flung 
them  all  crushed  and  torn  down  at  the  feet  of  her  temp- 
tress. 

"Great  God!"  he  cried  aloud  in  the  bitterness  of  his 
soul.  "The  tigress  and  the  leopardess  arc  tender  beside 
Woman.  Brutes  though  they  be  they  do  not  drive  the 
young  of  their  own  kind  down  into  the  nets  and  the  knives 
of  the  slaughter!  That  work  is  spared  for  Iter — Man's 
helpmeet,  God's  best  work!" 


CHAPTER  XXI. 


What  followed  she  never  remembered. 

When  she  recovered  consciousness  the  cool  autumn 
wind  was  blowing  on  her,  and  the  starless  rainy  night 
skies  were  above  her ;  she  was  lying  on  the  turf  thai  edged 
the  highway,  under  a  knot  of  roadside  trees;  beside  her 
in  the  gloom  stood  the  dim  .shadowy  form  of  a  man  and 
of  a  horse. 

The  former  leaned  over  her  and  touched  her  lips  with 
his  hand  as  she  Strove  to  speak. 

"Say  nothing;  there  is  no  need." 

The  old  familial'  sweetness  of  the  voice  struck  through 
her  heart;  she  raised  herself  and  gazed  into  his  eyes; 
then  trembled  and  hid  her  face  in  her  hands,  and  sobbed 
bitterly:  she  felt  unutterably  ashamed,  though  the  shame 
on  her  was  vague  and  withoul  name. 

She  sank  hack  11)1011  the  turf,  and  turned,  and  rested 
her  forehead  upon  the  wet  shorl  grass,  moaning  a  little 
like  a  wounded  fawn. 

He  >aid  no  word,  and  his  eves  were  dry,  as  he  sto.nl 
over  her  in  thai  attitude  of  abasement  and  humiliation, 
liui  lie  suffered  a  greater  torture  1  han  had  ever  \\  rung  his 
bright  and  happy  life. 

lie  had  come,  indeed,  in  time  to  save  her  from  more 
than  a  child's  broken  ideal,  a  child's  sorrowful  disenchant- 


232  TRICOTRIN, 

rnent;  but  nevertheless  was  she  to  him  as  utterly  killed 
as  though  he  stood  beside  her  dead  body.  His  rage  had 
spent  itself  upon  her  temptress ;  he  had  none  for  her. 

It  had  an  exceeding  pathos  for  him,  this  frailness  that 
had  been  seduced  by  such  fictitious  greatness,  this  inno- 
cence and  folly  welded  into  one,  which  had  been  allured 
by  such  a  painted,  worthless,  wooden  shape,  mistaking  it 
for  the  goddess  of  loveliness  and  pleasure. 

He  saw  it  with  the  pitying  tenderness  with  which  a 
gentle  shepherd  would  see  his  youngest  lamb  allured  by 
poisonous  and  gorgeous  blossoms,  sweet  to  the  taste,  and 
splendid  to  the  eye,  on  to  the  edge  of  a  volcanic  pit. 
Anger  against  her  he  could  not  feel ;  she  was  too  young, 
too  blind,  too  well-beloved.  But  the  thing  that  he  had 
cherished  seemed  forever  dead  to  him ;  and  a  great  blow 
smote  him  in  the  knowledge  that  the  first  hand  stretched 
out  to  her  with  the  world's  golden  bribes  had  been  strong 
enough  to  lead  her  away  without  a  thought  of  him. 

He  had  said  that  if  she  forsook  him  for  that  wanton  he 
would  leave  her  alone  to  her  choice  ;  but  when  the  test 
had  come  he  had  been  governed  by  no  impulse  save  that 
of  saving  her  from  peril  and  pollution.  Yet  the  same 
feeling  which  had  made  him  say  that,  were  she  faithless,  he 
would  never  seek  to  coerce  her  to  fidelity,  moved  him  now, 
and  made  him  hold  her  forever  as  utterly  lost  to  him  as 
though  her  will  had  had  its  way,  and  she  had  gone  to  the 
career  which  to  her  ignorance  and  her  credulity  looked  so 
fair. 

He  was  struck  the  deadliest  blow  that  life  could  have 
dealt  him. 

In  the  same  sense  that  the  sailor  of  the  Riviera  had 
been  robbed  and  deserted  by  the  flight  of  the  wife  he 
adored,  so  was  he  by  the  abandonment  of  the  creature 
that  had  been  made  his  own  by  every  tie  of  human  grat- 
itude. 

He  had  reached  that  sublime  self-sacrifice  which  speaks 
in  the  words — "If  I  love  thee  what  is  that  to  thee?" 
But  he  knew  the  bitterness  which  goes  with  those  words, 
in  the  knowledge  that  the  love  which  is  given  is  counted 
as  naught  by  the  one  on  whom  it  is  lavished ;  that  it  is 
of  so  little  account  that  the  life  which  it  cherishes  passes 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  A. YD   STRA  V.         233 

heedlessly  on,  with  no  more  thought  of  it  than  a  laughing 
child  on  the  first  day  of  spring  takes  of  the  shy  primrose 
and  the  purple  bells  of  thyme,  which  his  foot  crushes  as 
he  runs. 

"  If  I  love  thee  what  is  that  to  thee  ?" — it  is  the  supreme 
utterance  of  the  passion  which  can  withstand  absence 
and  neglect,  and  oblivion,  and  opprobrium,  and  scorn,  and 
thoughtless  cruelty,  and  still  live  on,  strengthened  by 
every  year,  and  purified  by  every  stroke.  But  none  the 
less  is  it  the  supreme  martyrdom  of  love. 

And  it  was  in  this  wise  that  his  good  deed  returned  to 
him;  and  the  bread  that  he  had  flung  upon  the  waters 
came  back,  and  was  as  ashes  in  his  teeth.  For  of  all 
things  that  are  true  upon  this  earth  this  is  most  true, — 
that  the  recompense  of  our  holier  acts  comes  not  in  this 
world,  ami  is  not  given  by  the  hands  of  humanity. 

"  Rejoice,  oh  ye  faithful  servants,"  is  not  uttered  under 
the  sun;  for  Life  is  merciless,  and  in  its  many  agonies 
and  in  its  many  evils  there  is  not  even  the  wild  justice 
that  belongs  to  vengeance;  there  is  but  tin-  sound  of  a 
mocking  voice  through  all  the  desolation,  laughing  ever 
at  the  travail  ami  the  cheated  hopes  of  men. 

Suddenly  she  lifted  herself,  and  caught  hold  of  him,  and 
gazed  up  in  his  eyes  again;  she  did  not  ask  for  pardon 
with  her  lips,  but  her  gaze  prayed  for  it  with  the  mute 
touching  prayer  of  a  dog's. 

He  turned  from  her  with  an  irresistible  shudder;  she 
was  a  child  still ;  she  did  not  know  what  she  had  done; 
she  was  conscious  of  her  error,  bul  not  of  its  effeel  ;  she 
knew  she  had  done  wrong,  but  she  did  not  know  that  she 
was,  in  his  siuht,  lost  to  him  forever. 

'Idic  creature  thai  hud  forsaken  him  must  go  from  him; 
the  love  thai  paid  its  fealty  only  to  coercion,  was  worse 
to  him  than  hale. 

"  Hush  !"  he  said  gently,  as  she  strove  to  speak.  "  You 
arc  not  wdl  enough  for  words!  There  is  no  need  of  them 
— I  know  all." 

lie  knew  all — without  her  shedding  one  ray  of  li-ht 
upon  the  tale;  knew  all  the  weakness,  the  folly,  the  inno- 
cence, the  willfulness,  the  vanity,  thai  had  hired  her  down 
a  flower-sown  path,  on  to  the  very  brink  of  ruin;  knew 


234  TRIC0TR1N, 

all  the  insufficiency  of  the  affection  borne  to  himself,  and 
given  by  himself,  to  hold  her  back  from  the  sweet  insidious 
seductions  of  riches  and  of  flattery ;  knew  that  he  had 
been  deserted  and  betrayed  with  none  the  less  cruel,  the 
less  merciless  infidelity,  because  that  infidelity  was  the  fault, 
of  a  child's  selfishness,  in  lieu  of  a  woman's  passion. 

Then,  still  with  the  same  gentleness  that  had  more 
terror  for  her  than  his  heaviest  anger  could  have  borne, 
he  lifted  her  into  a  covered  cart  that  he  had  summoned, 
as  it  rolled  slowly  toward  Paris  with  a  night  freight  of 
autumn  flowers,  and  leading  the  Norman  colt  by  its  haltt  p, 
walked  slowly  toward  the  city  by  the  side  of  the  littlg 
wagon,  in  whose  shelter  Viva  crouched,  sobbing  bitter1 
with  her  rich  silk  robes  covered  by  a  leathern  rug,  and 
her  face  buried  in  her  hands. 

For  the  hour  the  bitterness  of  her  chastisement  equaled, 
the  cruelty  and  the  weakness  of  her  fault. 

To  the  child — proudest  among  the  proud — no  punish- 
ment could  have  been  so  great  as  this  intense  humiliation, 
this  passionate  shame,  that  seemed  to  her  scorching  hef 
very  life  up  with  its  ignominy. 

The  way  into  Paris  appeared  one  endless  road  of  mar- 
tyrdom ;  only  two  brief  weeks  before  she  had  passed  along 
this  self-same  highway,  in  the  luster  of  the  illuminated 
night,  dreaming  that  the  city  would  receive  her  as  some 
royal  creature,  some  daughter  of  Carlovingian  or  Cape- 
tian  races,  born  to  wear  their  diadem,  and  sway  their 
scepter!  And  this  was  how  she  returned  from  her  first 
flight  toward  greatness. 

No  discrowned  queen  ever  went  with  heavier  heart 
from  her  palace  than  she  went  now,  back  from  the  first- 
fruits  of  her  own  will,  the  first  reward  of  her  own  ambi- 
tion. 

"Shall  I  never  be  other  than  I  am?"  she  thought  in 
desperation ;  the  dread  was  stronger  on  her,  even  in  that 
hour,  than  any  other  fear,' stronger  still  than  gratitude,  or 
repentance,  or  love  for  her  redeemer,  though  these  were 
all  startled  to  vivid  existence  in  her. 

He,  himself,  walked  in  silence,  wearily  and  slowly 
through  the  dark  and  chilly  night,  the  tired  steps  of  the 
colt  keeping  pace  for  pace  with  his  own. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         235 

Passion  had  spent  its  first  outburst  of  mad  fury ;  a  dull 
hopeless  anguish  remained. 

For- she  was  dead  to  him  as  utterly  as  though  he  had 
slain  her  like  Virginius,  to  save  her  from  the  arms  of  her 
spoilers. 

The  life  that  was  faithless  to  him,  could  stay  by  his 
side  no  longer. 

He  spoke  nothing  as  the  wagon  rolled  tediously  on 
its  way;  nothing  as  it  paused  before  the  door  of  Mere 
Rose,  and  he  lifted  her  out  from  its  shelter  and  led  her 
within  the  house. 

As  the  women  rushed  to  her,  with  tearful  cries  of  wel- 
come and  of  joy,  he  motioned  them  away. 

"  She  was  lost.     Let  her  be — she  is  tired." 

The  mingled  love  and  fear  in  which  they  held  him  sub- 
dued their  curiosity;  they  herded  together  in  the  passage 
hushed  and  afraid;  and  she, — with  her  head  hung  down, 
and  her  face  hidden  from  them,  crept  up  the  wooden  stairs 
in  the  dull  oil  light  with  slow  sad  steps,  from  which  all 
the  clastic  buoyancy  of  her  youth  was  banished. 

Once  within  the  little  attic  that  served  her  as  her  bed- 
chamber, she  thrust  the  rusted  iron  bolt  within  its  socket, 
put  out  the  oil  (lame  with  a  quick  gesture,  as  though  she 
dreaded  still  that  there  were  some  to  look  on  her,  and 
flinging  herself  down  on  her  straw  pallet,  wept  with  heart- 
broken Belf-pity;  half  like  a  child  from  whom  his  favorite 
playthings  have  been  taken,  half  like  a  woman  from  whose 
passions  an  ever-abiding  shame  has  sprung. 

"  If  I  could  only  be  great  1"  she  prayed ; — and  fell  asleep 
with  that  prayer  on  her  lips. 

Without — through  the  heavy  rains  that  were  falling 
through  the  dark  and  weary  streets — he  went  slowly,  lead- 
ing the  colt  homeward. 

He  had  received  his  recompense. 


236  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

At  midnight,  and  till  midnight  was  long  past,  he  waited 
in  the  great  court-yard  of  a  great  building. 

The  rains  beat'  fiercely  on  him,  but  he  did  not  heed 
them. 

It  was  almost  dawn  when  the  lights  of  a  carriage  flashed 
red  through  the  mists ;  he  sprang  forward  between  it  and 
the  gateway. 

Its  occupant  alighted,  and  was  stopped  by  him. 

"One  word  with  you?"  he  asked. 

The  Duke  de  Lira  started,  turned,  and  paused. 

"Now! — yes,  if  you  desire  it." 

They  went  within,  out  of  the  wet  black  night,  into  a 
great  lighted  frescoed  chamber,  like  the  chambers  of  the 
palaces  of  Rome. 

His  hair,  his  garments,  his  beard  were  dripping  with 
rain;  he  was  splashed  and  jaded,  and  pale  with  exhaus- 
tion and  pain;  he  observed  no  ceremony,  and  heeded  no 
form ;  he  stood  facing  the  man  he  had  sought,  and  spoke 
without  preface  or  address. 

"You  were  in  earnest  to-day?" 

"I  was." 

"  Then  I  come  to  take  you  at  your  word.  You  were 
right — I  was  wrong." 

The  noblest  words  that  can  be  uttered  by  human  lips 
cost  him  a  great  pang  in  their  utterance. 

The  other  looked  quickly  at  him,  and  said  nothing. 

"I  was  wrong,"  he  pursued,  rapidly.  "I  mistook  self- 
ishness for  justice,  and  was  led  astray  by  my  own  desires. 
I  threw  aside  a  great  good  for  another,  because  I  consid- 
ered and  studied  myself.  I  was  rough  in  anger  with  you, 
and  ungrateful  for  the  benefit  that  you  offered.  You 
stung  my  pride  and  my  heart,  and  I  was  blind — blind  to 
duty  and  justice.  Stay!  hear  me  out — it  was  so.  To- 
night I  have  had  my  punishment." 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         237 

He  paused  abruptly.  He  breathed  loud  and  fast ;  but 
his  eyes  never  left  their  straight  and  keen  regard  into  hia 
companion's,  and  his  words  were  spoken  unflinchingly. 

"You  said  rightly.  No  duty  can  hold  a  female  thing, 
no  tenderness  can  content  her,  when  once  the  passion  of 
her  vanity  has  been  fired.  Look  you, — that  child  is  inno- 
cent as  any  lamb  in  the  meadows,  any  dove  in  the  woods, 
and  yet  the  leaven  of  her  womanhood  is  in  her,  and  will 
urge  her  on  to  destruction.  I  thought,  in  my  folly,  that 
not  to  sin,  not  to  suffer,  not  to  know  the  meaning  of  evil, 
not  to  want  any  more  than  a  bird  wants  in  spring,  just  to 
live  the  free  harmless  life  of  a  country-born  creature,  would 
suffice  to  make  Jchild's  joy,  and  a  woman's  content.  I 
erred;  many  men  have  erred  like  me.  There  is  a  devil 
thrice  as  strong  as  we  are — the  devil  of  Discontent.  There 
is  the  tempter  that  lures  away  from  us  our  wives,  ami 
oar  mistresses,  and  our  daughters, — there  is  the  huckster 
that  buys  a  soul  with  a  string  of  seed-pearls,  and  chaffers 
away  honor  for  a  knot  of  sapphire  stones." 

\\\<  listener  grew  paler  as  he  heard. 

"  What,  lias  chanced  to  the  child?"  he  asked,  hurriedly. 
.She  had  touched  his  heart  more  deeply  than  Ik;  knew. 

"  This  has  chanced  to  her, — that  the  word  of  a  strange 
woman  had  more  sway  with  her  than  mine;  that  the  eyes 
of  men  have  found  out  that  she  has  loveliness;  that  the 
snares  of  the  city  have  been  spread  for  her,  and  have 
caught  her,  and  have  maimed  her.  Two  hours  since  I 
brought  her  out  from  the  house  of  Coriolis." 

"  Coriolis  ! — the  actress!" 

"Coriolis — the  courtesan.  Why  be  choicer  in  names 
than  she  is  in  her  sins?  She  lured  the  child  thither  by 
specious  words  and  gracious  promises.  In  the  eyes  of 
Viva  she  was  an  empress — an  angel!  Coriolis  caughl 
her  fancy  as  the  light  takes  a  moth's.  She  In  I  her  where 
she  chose,  for  she  promised  to  give  her  greatness!  She 
decoyed  her  there  toward  evening.  1  had  left  her  alone. 
When  I  returned  she  u  a>  lost  :  .-he  had  been  absent  SOme 
hours.  I  knew  at  once  where  Bhe  WUB  sure  to  have  wan- 
dered.  I  forced  my  entrance  into  the  villa — into  the 
chamber  where  thej  sat  at  their  banquet  They  had 
throned  the  child  there  as  a  queen,  and  a  terror  of  her 


238  TR  ICO  Til  IN, 

reign  had  just  commenced  to  touch  her.  I  was  in  time 
to  save  her.     What  I  said,  what  I  did,  I  have  forgotten." 

The  broken,  abrupt  sentences  escaped  him  harshly  and 
in  haste;  the  recital  was  terrible  to  him.  Honor  and 
honesty  demanded  it  from  him ;  but  none  the  less  was  it 
bitter  exceedingly. 

"  Stay!  Hear  me  out,"  he  said,  quickly,  as  his  listener 
interrupted  him.  "  Let  me  end  what  I  have  to  say.  I 
rescued  her  from  that  accursed  place  ere  she  had  learned 
more  than  a  vague  fear  and  a  wakening  horror  of  the 
world  into  which  she  was  flung.  But  what  use  is  it  to 
rescue  the  goat  from  the  pit,  if  it  return  again  and  again 
to  eat  the  poison-flowers  that  grow  on  its  sides  ?  And 
that  is  what  Viva  will  do.  She  is  innocent — yes;  but 
how  long  can  innocence  grow  side  by  side  with  vanity 
and  ambition  ?  The  eyes  of  libertines  have  beheld  her  ; 
the  brutality  that  christens  itself  love  has  fastened  on  her; 
the  powers  that  lie  in  wealth  are  arrayed  against  her — 
she  is  not  safe  one  moment  longer.  If  her  own  heart 
were  content,  indeed,  all  these  could  with  ease  be  defied. 
But  against  the  foe  in  her  own  soul  I  can  bring  no  army. 
I  may  restrain  her  from  sin, — she  is  brave,  and  proud, 
and  pure  of  thought — vice  once  unmasked  to  her  would 
be  loathsome.  But  I  cannot  keep  her  in  peace;  and — 
and — I  dare  not  keep  her  in  misery!  Now,  I  have  told 
you  this.  It  was  your  due  to  know  it.  It  may  well  be 
that  you  will  withdraw  the  offer  you  made  her  two  even- 
ings ago.  You  will  be  justified  in  so  doing.  She  does 
not  know  the  evil  she  has  wrought  herself;  but  I  know- 
it,  and  I  know  that  a  woman-child  that  has  been  once  be- 
neath the  roof  of  Coriolis  may  well  be  marked  as  dishon- 
ored forever." 

"Hush,  hush!  Would  you  deem  me  so  brutal,  so 
harsh  ? — for  a  young  girl's  unthinking  rashness,  a  play- 
ful creature's  foolish  fault?" 

"It  would  be  no  harshness;  it  would  be  justice.  A 
woman's  fair  repute  is  like  a  blue  harebell — a  touch  can 
wither  it.  What  she  did  to-day — in  rashness,  in  folly,  as 
you  say — may  rise  up  in  future  years,  and  bring  her  bit- 
ter chastisement.  Yet — it  makes  no  difference  with  you, 
this  thing  that  I  have  told  ?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  239 

"None.     I  desire  to  serve  her  as  greatly  as  I  ever  did." 

"  That  is  very  nobly  said.  Then  I  accept  your  oiler. 
I  do  not  dare  to  thrust  it  aside." 

He  stopped  abruptly;  his  voice  was  hoarse,  and  died 
away  in  a  whisper.  The  other  made  no  answer;  he  di- 
vined the  suffering  that  accompanied  this  adhesion  to  his 
will. 

"Let  her  come,"  he  said,  softly,  at  length.  "For  a 
brief  space,  at  least.  At  its  close — who  can  tell  ?  Early 
impressions  have  great  force,  and  what  we  arc  nurtured 
in  we  commonly  prefer;  her  absence  may  show  her  how 
strong  her  love  for  you  is,  and  how  needful  to  her  is  the 
life  of  which  her  ignorance  now  wearies." 

"There  is  no  likelihood  of  that,  She  is  a  hawk  that 
once  cast  down  tin;  wind  will  never  come  back  to  the 
wrist  of  her  keeper." 

"  Why  so  ?     She  loves  you  ?"  . 

"Ay,  as  children  love.  Where  is  the  child  whom  some 
costlier  bauble  than  what  you  can  give  will  not  lure  away 
from    vonr   hold   soon  or  late?      Xo — if  she  come  to  you 

once,  she  '.iocs  fi i  me  forever.     But — there  is  no  need 

to  speak  of  myself." 

"There  is  great  need.  Look  what  an  immeasurable 
debt  she  owe.-  to  you." 

"I  do  not  count  it,  Neither  need  she  nor  any  one.  I 
desire  her  to  be  happy,  that  is  all.  There  is  another 
matter  which  concerns  her.  The  youth  of  whom  I  spoke 
io  you, that  young  iordling,  was  one  of  the  accursed  crew 
to-night.  Doubtless  it  was  his  gold  that  bribed  Coriolis 
to  the  setting  of  her  snare.  He  has  hail  his  punishmenl  ; 
he  will  not  stir  his  bruised  frame  for  months.  When  he 
docs  arise,  shame  will  tie  his  tongue,  and  I  ran  drive  him 
from  the  country,  for  a  season,  by  a  power  1  have  over 
him — the  power  of  the  knowledge  of  his  own  vires.  But 
if  you  have  aught  to  do  witli  Viva,  it  is  needful  that  you 
should    he  aware  of  hint — lie  is  the  son  of   Estmere.      Ho 

lias  broken  faith  with  me;  he  is  traitor  a.-  well  as  tempter; 

bul  1  care  not  to  wring  his  father's  great  laari  with  tin' 
tah'  of  his  shame;  cowardice  and  falsehood  never  before 
touched  his  race." 


240  TRICOTRIN, 

"  You  spare  the  child's  tempter !  You  are  generous 
indeed!" 

"  I  spare  Estmere — not  him." 

"  Lord  Estmere  !     What  is  he  to  you  ?" 

"  He  is  a  man  who  is  honored ;  he  is  a  man  who  has 
suffered.  They  are  titles  sufficient  to  forbearance.  Be- 
side a  girl's  innocent  name,  a  girl's  stainless  youth,  they 
are  things  that  will  no  more  bear  men's  handling  than 
will  a  snowflake  as  it  falls !  Is  there  any  other  thing  to  be 
said  ?  Tell  your  mother  what  I  have  told  to  you ;  Viva 
enters  no  home  under  the  shelter  of  falsehood.  But — do 
you  know  that  the  world  will  call  you  a  madman  ?" 

"Wherefore?" 

"  For  believing  the  word,  and  recieving  the  Waif  and 
Stray,  of — a  bohemian!" 

"  The  world  can  do  so.  I  have  attended  to  it  as  little 
in  my  fashion  as  you  in  yours.  I  know  that  I  have  the 
truth  from  your  lips ;  I  have  been,  also,  at  the  pains  to 
verify  the  facts  that  you  have  related  to  me ;  and  I  be- 
lieve that  I  see  my  way  to  rendering  another  life  happy. 
As  for  my  being  deemed  a  madman, — it  is  ever  the  better 
things  in  us  that  the  world  calls  our  insanities." 

Tricotrin  gave  no  reply ;  his  eyes  dwelt  on  those  of 
the  speaker  with  a  long  searching,  penetrative  regard, 
that  seemed  to  seek  to  pierce  the  secret  thoughts  of  his 
innermost  mind.  Then,  with  an  abrupt  movement,  he 
turned  away. 

"You  have  a  noble  nature,  and  you  do  a  noble  act,"  he 
said,  briefly.  "But — I  cannot  thank  you  till,  in  the  years 
to  come,  I  see  how  it  is  with  her." 

Then,  without  farewell  or  obeisance,  he  quitted  the 
chamber  swiftly.  He  was  even  as  the  shepherd  who  had 
left  the  ewe  lamb  that  he  had  saved  through  storm  and 
drought,  and  warmed  in  his  bosom,  and  fed  with  his  hand, 
at  the  threshold  of  the  rich  man's  palace 

The  Duke  de  Lira  started  as  the  door  closed,  and  leant 
in  perplexed  meditation  against  the  bronze  reading-stand, 
on  which  the  great  volumes  that  he  usually  studied  lay. 

He  was  a  man  of  pure  intent,  of  gentle  heart,  of  noble 
nature,  untouched  by  pride,  untainted  by  evil  desire.  He 
earnestly  desired  to  benefit  this  beautiful  young  thing, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         241 

whose  bright  youth  fascinated  him.  He  was  wholly  un- 
conscious that  any  selfish  impulse  prompted  the  determ- 
inate effort  with  which  he  had  vanquished  his  mother's 
disinclination  to  take  a  foundling  beneath  her  roof.  Be 
was  incapable  of  cruelty,  incapable  of  a  base  egotism  ;  he 
believed  himself  only  actuated  by  a  genuine  compassion; 
he  had  in  no  way  awakened  to  any  perception  of  the  at- 
traction that  Viva's  personal  loveliness  possessed  for  him ; 
he  had  been  entirely  honest  in  all  that  he  had  said. 

Yet,  as  he  leaned  there,  a  certain  sense  that  he,  with 
every  sincere  and  good  intent,  had  still  done  that  which 
was  cruel  and  unjustified,  stole  on  him.  lie  had  consid- 
ered only  her  welfare;  he  had  been  callous  to  the  pain 
that  her  loss  mighl  cause  to  the  only  one  who  hit  In  rto 
had  set  any  value  on  her  undefended  and  unclaimed  life. 
He  had  thought  only  of  gratifying  the  wistful  desires  that 
shone  in  her  radiant  eyes ;  he  had  forgotten  thai  her  trans- 
lation to  new  spheres  might  leave  a  void,  never  to  be  Idled 
again,  in  the  hearl  that  had  grown  to  hold  her  as  its 
treasure. 

He  had  known  Tricotrin  to  be  a  careless,  fearless,  high- 
couraged,  laughter-loving  wanderer,  imprisoned  by  no  ties, 
bound  liy  no  creeds,  chained  to  no  home  It  had  never 
seemed  possible  to  him  thai  such  an  one  could  love  as 
tenderly  as  he  loathed  bondage  passionately,  or  that  his 
affections  could  strike  deep  root,  though  his  temper  Hung 
off  all  fetters.  It  was  only  now;  now  when  to  perceive 
this  was  useless,  that  any  glimpse  of  its  truth  flashed 
upon  him. 

"  I  hoped  to  do  good,"  he  thought  wearily.  "  What  if  it 
end  in  evil  ?" 


21 


242  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

Viva  slept  all  the  noon  of  the  next  day. 

When  she  awoke,  rest  and  slumber  had  healed  all  the 
harm  that  the  night's  terror  and  fatigue  had  wrought 
on  her:  to  the  health  and  the  strength  of  her  youth  ill- 
ness was  impossible.  But  the  wound  to  her  pride  and 
her  conscience  had  struck  more  deeply;  it  was  with  a 
dull,  heavy  sense  of  pain  and  of  shame  that  she  arose  and 
dressed  herself,  and  went  to  her  accustomed  seat  in  the 
attic  casement.  For  the  first  time  fear — the  sure  shadow 
of  all  evil  doing — possessed  her:  for  the  first  time,  she 
felt  afraid  of  meeting  the  eyes  of  the  friend  whom  she 
had  wronged. 

Moreover,  there  was  the  old  leaven  still  working  in  her, 
despite  all  her  loathing  of  her  temptress,  despite  her 
instinctive  consciousness  of  having  escaped  some  terrible 
danger.  The  old  desire  and  discontent  still  murmured 
in  her  soul  as  she  gazed  at  her  white  linen  dress,  and 
thought  of  those  pearls  and  sapphires  she  had  worn,  as  she 
looked  round  the  wooden  walls  of  her  attic,  and  thought 
of  the  soft  scarlet  hues  and  silver  glisten  of  the  actress's 
banqueting-c  h  amber . 

"  Ah  !  why  does  wickedness  have  all  the  beauty  and 
all  the  pleasure?"  she  wondered  with  an  aching  heart, 
perplexed  by  the  question  that  mocks  divines,  and  scoffs 
at  philosophers,  and  baffles  at  every  turn  the  efforts  of 
moralists  and  teachers. 

Virtue  gives  her  children  so  often  but  stones  when 
they  ask  of  her  for  the  bread  of  life:  wickedness  casts  the 
golden  apples  by  thousands  to  her  followers.  And  false 
is  the  preacher,  who,  denying  this,  bribes  to  the  allegiance 
of  the  first  by  promise  of  her  crowns,  and  seeks  to  affright 
from  the  palaces  of  the  last  by  oaths  that  her  festivals  and 
banquets  are  Barmecide  feasts  held  above  an  oubliette  of 
death. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         243 

The  poignant  grief  of  the  past  night  had  somewhat 
softened  with  the  waking  day;  had  somewhal  changed 
into  the  flattered  sense  that  her  very  error,  her  very  de- 
ception, her  very*  peril,  were  befitting  the  romance  that 
belonged  to  such  an  enchanted  princess  as  herself.  Al- 
though the  natural  conscience  and  impulse  of  the  child 
had  made  her  recoil  from  her  disobedience,  and  repel,  in 
an  instinct  of  loathing,  the  overtures  of  her  young  lover, 
now  that  she  was  safe  and  was  alone,  a  certain  sweetness 
lay  for  her  in  the  remembrance  of  such  an  episode,  a 
certain  delight  existed  in  the  sense  that  she  had  been 
deemed  worth  the  weaving  of  such  a  web  to  entrap  her. 

The  dominant  thing  in  her  was  pride,  and  her  pride 
had  been  up  in  arms  against  her  tempters:  but  the  next 
strongest  thing  in  her  was  vanity,  and  vanity  found  a 
charm  in  the  remembrance  that  she  had  passed  through 
such  a  proof  of  her  power. 

At  night  she  had  wept  with  joy  to  be  given  back  to 
the  safe,  familiar,  innocent  life  of  her  childood  :  but  with 
the  morning  she  grew  well-nigh  ungrateful  for  safety,  and 
thought  in  all  the  restlessness  of  nascent  ambition:  "Shall 
I  always  stay  thus,  like  a  wood-dove  in  a  wicker-work 
cage,  when  the  world  holds  so  many  palace  gardens 
whence  such  paradise-birds  as  I  can  spread  their  golden 
plumes  in  the  sun  ?" 

She  had  escaped  from  Coriolis ;  but  she  had  not 
escaped  from  the  poison  that  Coriolis  had  breathed  over 
her. 

It  was  well,  she  knew,  to  be  safe  in  her  haven  ;  but  it 
was  tedious,  it  was  monotonous,  it  had  no  picturesque 
color  in  it:  and  she  began  to  sigh  again,  though  ashamed 
of  her  sighs,  for  those  glittering  pleasures  that  she  had 
just  tasted,  as  a  humming-bird  just  tastes  the  houev  in 
a  flower  which  a  cruel  wind  shatters  down  into  a  heap  of 
braised  petals. 

The  poison  had  touched  her  lips;  though  she  had  shud- 
dered at  its  baneful  sweetness,  yet  the  tbirsl  for  more  of 

its  lusciousness  had  l n  left  awakened  and  unappeased. 

She  thought,  with  a  sori  of  despair,  of  her  future :  it  was 

the    first  time   that  ever   she   had   dreaded   this   unknown 
thing,  which,  ever  ere  now,  had  been  enfolded  in  the  gold- 


244  TRICOTRIN, 

spangled  mask-dress  of  so  mysterious  and  royal  a  new- 
comer ;  for  the  first  time  she  now  remembered  that  under 
its  gay  domino  there  might  be  seen,  perchance,  a  skele- 
ton,— a  death's-head.  She  had  no  accurate  knowledge  of 
what  it  was  that  she  felt :  but  she  had  a  vague  nameless 
terror  of  herself,  as  though  she  were  conscious  that  if  in- 
nocence must  be  leashed  with  obscurity,  the  wild  desire 
for  greatness  that  lay  in  her  would  hurl  her,  sooner  or 
later,  into  the  dominion  and  the  power  of  evil. 

The  full  noon  light  was  slanting  through  the  lattice 
when  the  step  which  she  knew  and  loved  the  best  came 
up  the  wooden  stair.  She  cowered  down  and  buried  her 
face  in  her  hands  :  she  felt  heart  sick  with  humiliation, 
and  all  the  love  she  bore  him  smote  her  with  its  remorse. 

One  thing  alone  had  he  ever  forbidden  to  her ;  and  that 
one  thing  she  had  seized  in  all  the  willfulness  of  rebellion  1 

She  never  looked  up  as  he  crossed  the  chamber ;  she 
trembled  as  she  felt  that  he  drew  near ;  she  heard  him 
pause  beside  her,  and  she  shrank  farther  and  farther  back 
— in  silence. 

He  stood  near,  silent  also. 

Then  by  a  swift  impulse,  she  caught  his  hands  and 
gazed  up  in  his  face. 

"  Forgive  me  !  Oh  do  forgive  me  !"  she  cried,  while  her 
voice  was  choked  with  tears.  "  I  was  so  wicked !  and 
yet  I  meant  no  harm ;  she  said  you  should  know,  and 
that  you  would  learn  to  see  you  wronged  her,  and  that  I 
was  a  burden  to  you  when  I  might  grow  great  and  be 
your  glory  1  I  never  knew  that  young  prince  would  be 
there — I  never  did  indeed  1  Believe  me — oh  pray,  be- 
lieve me!" 

"  I  believe  you.  If  I  had  thought  that  you  could  lie,  I 
would  have  left  you  to  live  and  die  in  that  hell  you  had 
chosen." 

The  words  were  stern  and  chill,  and  perfectly  calm : 
she  shuddered  under  them,  yet  she  took  courage  to  look 
up  in  his  beloved  familiar  face.  And  she  saw  that  his 
eyes  were  fixed  on  her  with  a  look  that  smote  her  to  the 
heart ;  the  look  that  tearless  eyes  will  give  to  some 
treasured  thing  that  lies  cold  in  death.  She  gave  a  cry 
as  of  irrepressible  pain,  and  flung  herself  at  his  feet,  all 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STlAr-  247 

the  force  and  fervor  of  her  variable  nature  roused  T  have 
accusation  and  self-hate.  ome 

"Biam&ine — heat  me — kill  me!  but  do  not  look  at  el 
like  that !     I  was  wrong — oh,  I  know  it  so  well  I     1  was 
vain,  and  foolish,  and  mad,  and  wicked,  but  throw  me 
out  on  to  the  stones  of  the  streets.     Do  not  look  at  me 
again  like  that !" 

A  great  pity  changed  and  softened  his  gaze  as  he  heard ; 
he  stooped  and  raised  her  gently. 

"  I  was  harsh — forgive  me.  I  forgot  how  weak  and 
young  a  thing  you  are.  Hush  1 — do  not  sob  so  bitterly. 
You  were  tempted,  and  you  had  not  strength  to  resist. 
Well,  it  is  oftentimes  so  with  all.  You  are  not  alone  my 
little  one." 

There  was  an  intense  compassion,  a  passionless  sadness 
in  the  words,  which  awed  her  as  no  words  of  upbraiding 
could  have  done. 

"But  I  am  vile!"  she  murmured.  "So  vile  to  have 
ever  disbelieved  you,  and  disobeyed  youl  Let  me  tell 
you  all,  and  then " 

He  stopped  her. 

"  No.  I  know  all  I  need  to  know.  Spare  me  the  tale 
of  how  much  dearer  than  I,  were  the  world  and  thai 
wanton  to  you." 

He  turned  from  her,  unable  to  hide  the  anguish  that 
this  one  disloyalty  had  wrought  liini  :  the  child  hung  her 
head  and  said  nothing.  She  blushed  for  the  thoughts 
which  a  moment  before  had  haunted  her;  she  was  dis- 
loyal to  him  still,  the  world  still  dethroned  him. 

He  paced  to  and  fro  the  chamber  awhile,  conquering 
the  fierce  longing  which  possessed  him  to  seize  tor  his 
own,  let  it  cost  what  it  would,  this  fair  faithless  lite  that 
already  seemed  so  wholly  his  own.  When  he  came  again 
to  her  it  was  with  that  tranquillity  in  his  look  and  in  his 
voice,  which  he  had  striven,  so  many  hours  through,  to 
attain  ere  he  had  < ie  into  her  presence. 

"We  will  never  speak  again  of  this.'*  he  said  gently. 
"Von  disobeyed  me,  indeed,  but  you  were  sorely 
tempted;  you  were  wooed  through  yum-  weakest  follies; 
and  you  were  moved  by  a  noble  thought  even  in  the 
midst  of  your  selfishness.     1  forgive  it.     I  do  not  sa\  for- 

21  * 


24G  TRICOTRIN, 

give  yourself:  for  you  were  very  wrong,  and  I  would 
fain  have  the  remembrance  of  your  error  wound  you 
sharply  awhile,  so  that  the  cicatrix  it  leaves  be  a  warn- 
ing to  you  forever.  But  we  will  never  speak  again  of 
your  action,  or  of  your  tempters.  As  you  grow  into 
womanhood  you  will  see,  as  you  cannot  see  now,  the  full 
extent  of  their  wickedness  and  of  your  peril.  I  have 
other  things  to  say  to  you.     Listen." 

Viva,  stilled  and  vaguely  half  affrighted,  half  consoled, 
raised  her  tear-laden  eyes  to  his,  and  held  her  breath,  and 
waited  with  an  indefinite  prescience  that  the  time  was 
near  at  hand  when  he  and  she  would  be  no  more  as  they 
so  long  had  been  in  this  joyous  and  unshadowed  life, 
which  to  her  impatient  ignorance  had  grown  so  wearisome. 

"  Listen,"  he  went  on,  speaking  still  with  that  calmness 
which  he  had  taught  himself  to  wear  before  her.  "Your 
act  last  night  has  taught  me  what  I  had  feared  before  ; 
that  I  have  not  the  means  nor  the  power  to  make  you 
happy  any  longer.  No  1  hear  me  out.  It  is  not  ingrati- 
tude in  you  ;  it  is  your  woman's  nature.  You  pine  and 
pant  for  things  that  are  not  in  my  hands  to  bestow  on 
you.  A  female  soul  that  chafes,  and  longs,  and  harbors 
discontent  is  ever  on  the  balance  toward  evil :  for  sin 
has  already  its  surest  forerunner  and  ally  fastened  upon 
the  life  that  is  at  war  with  itself.  Therefore,  since  I 
cannot  provide  the  gratification  of  your  desire,  others 
must  do  so." 

He  paused,  and  his  breath  came  with  a  short,  sharp 
sigh :  she  listened,  moved  with  keen  repentance,  yet  also 
moved  to  a  vague  and  eager  expectancy. 

"  I  should  have  told  you  yesterday,"  he  continued,  with 
an  effort,  "that  your  fairy  was  no  fairy,  as  you  may  be 
sure ;  but  what  is  quite  as  potent  in  this  world,  a  rich  and 
nobly  born  person.  She  is  the  mother  of  that  gentleman 
whom  you  have  seen  here  some  few  times ;  the  Duchess 
de  Lira.  She  is  very  aged,  but  very  powerful,  very  emi- 
nent, very  wealthy :  and  she  is  filled  with  excellent  intent 
to  you.  She  invites  you  to  pass  a  brief  season  with  her, 
as  her  guest.  Yesterday  I  refused  ;  perhaps  selfishly,  but 
deeming  that  it  was  best  for  you  not  to  enter  and  enjoy 
a  mode  of  life  that  I  cannot  continue  to  you.     Now,  I 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  247 

know  that  some  change  must  be  made  for  you,  and  T  have 
accepted  this  offer :  because  otherwise  much  evil  will  come 
unto  you."  * 

"Ob  no,  oh  no  !"  she  murmured.  "I  will  be  good,  I 
will  be  content,  I  will  try,  indeed  I  will  try,  never  to  long 
for  anything  save  what  I  have." 

"That  will  be  vain,"  he  said  bitterly.  "  The  dog  that 
is  only  held  by  her  chain  will  be  faithless  the  first  instant 
that  she  tears  her  neck  from  her  collar!  No,  I  do  not 
mean  to  be  cruel  to  you,  my  child.  I  mean  only,  that 
though  you  should  honestly  intend  to  be  contented, 
and  strive  to  be  so,  the  content  which  requires  to  be 
striven  after,  is  a  hollow  thing  which  embitters  and  de- 
ceives alike  the  one  who  seeks  for  it  and  the  one  who 
lives  near  it.  The  moment  that  love  or  content  need  an 
effort  to  keep,  both  are  valueless;  both  are  dead  bodies 
from  which  the  spirit  has  flown.  I  have  been  your  guar- 
dian, I  will  not  be  your  jailer." 

lie  stopped  once  more;  the  child  said  nothing;  sin- 
could  not  have  promised  him  honestly  a  content  that 
should  have  been  spontaneous  and  shadowless. 

.After  awhile  he  spoke  again. 

"The  change  that  your  temptress  offered  you,  was  to 
woo  you  from  health  and  peace  to  the  plague  and  the 
horror  of  a  lazar  ward;  but  the  change  that  this  great 
lady  holds  out  to  you  may  be,  as  in  all  Likelihood  it  will 
be,  splendid.  At  any  rate  it  is  a  chance:  a  chance  for 
you  that  I  dare  not  put  away  untried,  since  the  pasl 
night  showed  me  how  easily  to  be  led  into  peril  you  are, 
and  how  hard  to  be  weaned  from  evil.  At  your  years. 
Coriolis  was  no  worse  than  yon  are  now,  a  young  thing, 
an  innocent  thing,  a  thing  gay  ami  careless,  and  full  of 
play  on  a  sunny  seashore;  but  vain  and  restless,  and  full 
of  vague  ambition  and  sect  hing  discontent,  and  impatience 
at  her  lot  and  at  her  home.  Lest  the  time  should  ever 
come  when  looking  on  you  I  should  curse  you— as  every 
mouth  that  is  pure  with  truth  curses  hers  that  is  one  lie 
incarnate — I  know  that  you  must  go  from  me,  I  know- 
that  you  must  pass  out  of  my  life  and  oul  of  my  love, 
now,  and  it  may  be  forever." 

His  voice  sank  very  low,  and    grew  Unsteady  over    the 


248  TRICOTRIN, 

last  words ;  but  there  was  in  his  accent  that  which  struck 
her  with  an  intense  fear,  and  moved  her  with  a  strange 
dim  horror  of  the  thing  she  might  become — as  though  in 
some  glass  of  sorcery  she  beheld  the  fair  face  of  her 
beaming  youth,  gray,  and  shrunken,  and  sightless,  and 
ghastly  with  the  corruption  of  death,  with  the  ashes  of 
age. 

She  seemed  to  behold,  as  in  some  vision,  the  power  of 
evil  that  lay  slumbering  in  her  :  the  weakness  that  would 
grow  to  guilt,  the  dream  that  would  fructify  in  sin,  the 
ambition  that  reaching  up  to  heaven  would  recoil  and 
fall  to  hell ;  the  nascent  passions  hushed  under  the  calm 
of  youth,  like  painted  snakes  asleep  beneath  the  leaves  of 
roses,  that  would  arise  and  coil,  and  sting,  and  slaughter, 
and  die  at  last  of  their  own  poison.  She  shuddered  where 
she  stood,  and  her  lips  grew  pale,  and  she  stretched  her 
arms  out  to  him  with  a  blind  piteous  gesture. 

"She  said  that  such  things  as  I  were  always  born  for 
evil ;  it  seemed  her  glory,  and  she  bade  me  make  it  mine ; 
ah !  why  did  you  not  set  your  foot  on  me  and  crush  me 
when  you  found  me  among  the  grasses  ?  It  had  been 
better  so." 

Ho  quivered  as  though  she  had  pierced  him  with  a 
knife ;  the  reproach  that  he  had  so  long  foreseen  and  feared 
rebuked  him;  he  had  his  reward  at  last. 

But  his  thoughts  chiefly,  even  in  that  moment,  were 
for  her.  He  took  her  hands,  and  looked  down  on  her 
with  pitiful  gentleness. 

"  My  child,  I  knew  the  time  would  come  when  you 
would  utter  that  plaint  against  me.  You  are  a  woman, 
and  born  of  a  woman  !  But  you  are,  for  all  that,  of  a  brave 
spirit;  and  your  reproach  to  me  is  the  reproach  of  a 
coward.  It  rests  with  you  to  live  your  life  nobly  or 
vilely.  We  have  not  our  choice  to  be  rich  or  be  poor,  to 
be  happy  or  unhappy"  to  be  in  health  or  in  sickness;  but 
we  have  our  choice  to  be  worthy  or  worthless.  No  an- 
tagonist can  kill  our  soul  in  us;  that  can  perish  only 
from  its  own  suicide.  Ever  remember  that.  Indeed,  to 
(•natures  like  you,  the  way  to  evil  is  perilously  easy; 
but  none  can  force  you  down  its  incline  unless  your  own 
vanities  and   passions  first  impel   you.     You  have  re- 


THE   STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND    STRAY.         249 

proached  me,  for  the  first  time,  with  having  saved  you  to 
run  your  course  ol'life ;  it  is  that  you  may  not  have  to  utter 
that  reproach  in  far  more  deadly  earnestness  in  year-  to 
coined  that  I  shall  send  you  from  me  now.  Frail  flowers 
such  as  you  need  fence,  and  shade,  and  culture,  and 
training  toward  the  sun.  You  cannot  soar  upward  and 
grow  straightly  in  storm,  and  cold,  and  drought.  I  was 
to  blame  that  I  forgot  this.  But  I  shall  never  again  for- 
get it.  I  was  unwise  enough  to  dream  that  I  might  graft 
on  you  some  of  my  philosophy; — I  forgot  that  yon  were 
not  of  my  sex!  The  life  that  has  been  so  good  to  mo 
would  not  suffice  to  you.  I  should  have  known  it  ear- 
lier  " 

"  Yet  my  life  has  been  so  happy  1"  she  cried,  in  invol- 
untary self-reproach. 

'•  Ah — so  you  will  remember  and  realize,  years  hence, 
with  vain  regret,  hut  it  is  no  longer  happy  to  you  now. 
The  desire  for  the  unknown  has  come  on  you.     Let   us 
speak  of  it  no  more;  I  have   fair  news  for  you.     This 
great  lady  seems  willing  to  befriend  you  ;  go  to  her  for  a 
short  season.     It  will  be  something  fresh  at  least." 
"  But  what  will  grand-'mere  think?" 
"She  has  not  lived  through  eighty-three  years  to  ex- 
pect gratitude  in  the  young,  or  memory  in  the  absent. 
You  were  angered  with  me  yesterday  that  I  told  you  no 
more  of  your  'fairy.'      I    ought  to   have  done   so.     It 
might  have  saved  you  from  one  harsh  experience.      Hut — • 
I  was  selfish.      I  waited  on  my  own  wish,  ami   I   forgot 
your  welfare." 

Ami  to  the  breadth  and  the  depth  of  the  man's  gener- 
ous nature  it  seemed,  indeed,  that  he  had  been  guilty  of 
an  ungenerous  and  of  an  illiberal  thing  in  counting,  before 
the  benefil  of  this  foundling  whom  he  had  harbored,  tin; 
wish  and  the  peace  of  his  own  future.  It  seemed  to  him 
that  to.  lay  a  claim  to  this  existence  which  ho  had  aa 
because  it  bad  been  thus  saved  by  him.  was  a  mono 
and  a  cowardice  that  deserved  its  chastisement. 

••  l  rejected  the  offer  for  you,"  he  pursued,  with  effort. 
"I  did  wrong;  I  see  that  now.  I  can  only  hope  my 
error  can  lie  repaired.  Lasl  night  I  soughl  oul  the  Duke 
de  Lira,  L  told   him  this;    I  told  him   also  what    you    had 


250  TRICOTRIN, 

done.  Nay — do  not  shrink  at  that.  You  might  shrink 
indeed  if  I  let  you  go  under  his  roof  with  a  lie  in  your 
mouth.  I  told  him — all.  Of  your  passion  for  the  stage ; 
of  your  idolatry  of  this  dazzling  sinner  ;  of  the  scene  in 
which  I  found  you  ;  of  the  allurements  that  had  tempted 
you.  He  knows  everything.  But  your  folly  does  not 
change  his  desire  to  befriend  you.  I  have  seen  him 
again  this  morning.  You  can  go — at  once — to  the  exist- 
ence he  offers  you." 

Viva  drew  a  deep  breath. 

"  They  are  great  people  ?"  she  asked  wistfully. 

"  They  are  of  great  rank, — do  you  mean  that?  There 
are  great  lives  spent  in  garrets,  in  mines,  in  beds  of  agony, 
in  galley  slaves'  benches.  But  '  great'  in  your  sense 
means  only  affluent  and  arrogant!" 

A  feverish  bitterness  in  his  tone,  altogether  foreign  to 
him,  arrested  her  attention. 

"You  do  not  wish  me  to  go?"  she  asked,  with  the 
same  wistfulness.  "  Tell  me,  you  know  I  will  never  dis- 
obey you  again  ?" 

"Disobey!  Am  I  your  taskmaster?"  he  said  fiercely, 
the  fierceness  that  pain  arouses  in  man  as  in  every  other 
animal.  "  If  you  loved  me,  would  you  talk  of  obedience  ? 
In  love,  two  wills  move  together,  inspired  by  one  soul, 
as  the  two  wings  of  a  bird  move,  ever  apart  yet  ever  in 
union.  But — that  love  is  not  between  us.  Your  wings 
are  your  own ;  let  them  bear  you  where  you  will.  What 
pleases  you  pleases  me.  Be  free  as  air  to  follow  your 
fancies.  It  may  be  for  your  good  that  this  thing-  opens 
to  you ;  it  is  not  for  me  to  close  the  door " 

"  But  what  do  you  wish?  It  is  that  which  I  want  to 
know  !" 

"What  you  wish  is  the  question  here.  You  wish  for 
riches,  rank,  luxuries,  prominence,  all  sorts  of  vanities 
and  indulgences  :  well — you  will  see  them  nearer  at  least 
by  this  visit.  That  is  something.  It  may  be  that  they 
will  lose  their  enchantment ;  and  then " 

The  sentence  broke  off  abruptly  ;  he  could  not  put  into 
words  the  hope  which  rose  in  him  that,  closely  seen,  these 
things  which  looked  to  him  so  idle  and  so  artificial  might 
lose  their  glittering  bewitchment  for  her;    and  that  in 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRA  P  251 

their  hot-pressed  atmosphere  her  young-  free  heart  might 
spring  back  at  a  rebound  to  the  liberty,  and  the  fresh- 
ness, and  the  sincerity,  of  the  life  in  which  she  had  been 
reared. 

"  And  then  what  ?"  asked  Viva,  anxiously. 

"No  matter!  They  may  only  gain  surer  sorcery  over 
you  ;  I  forgot  that  you  were  feminine,  my  Waifl  At 
any  rate,  your  new  friend  means  well ;  she  can  be  of  use 
to  you,  as  poor  old  grand'mere  never  can ;  she  shows 
great  kindness  in  the  mere  interest  she  takes  in  you,  be- 
cause you  are — what  you  are.  You  have  grown  impa- 
tient of  the  life  you  lead, — yes,  and  will  grow  more  so, 
despite  all  your  promises,  which  I  know,  for  all  that, 
were  sincere.  In  the  household  of  Madame  de  Lira  you 
can  see  a  little  for  yourself  what  the  greatness  you  covet 
is  like.  You  can  measure  for  yourself  the  differences  be- 
tween the  existence  you  lead  through  me,  and  this  existence 
in  wealth  and  in  pomp  which  you  imagine  can  have  no 
cares.  The  opportunity  offers:  it  is  but  right  you  should 
take  it.  Come — there  is  nothing  to  wait  for;  I  will  leave 
you  there,  and  in  eight  days  I  will  return  for  you." 

Viva  stood  irresolute;  something  in  his  words,  colder 
and  mom  brief  than  they  had  ever  been  to  her,  though 
still  so  gentle,  moved  her  with  a  certain  fear,  that  dashed 
a  dullness  over  the  prospect  before  her. 

"  But  if  I  am  not  happy  there?"  she  murmured,  with 
a  sudden  terror. 

In  an  instant  she  saw  the  smile  she  knew  so  well  beam 
in  its  brightness,  and  its  tenderness,  over  the  face  above 
her. 

"  Well! — you  will  know  your  refuge  !  Come  to  me  in 
your  sorrows,  if  you  forgel  me  in  your  joys  I" 

For  the  first  time  some  conception  of  the  depth  and 
magnitude  of  this  priceless  love  which  succored  her  in 
all  things,  and  claimed  nothing  at  her  hands  in  recom- 
pense, stole  on  her  senses  with  a  vague  emotion  of  her 
own  absolute  unworthiness  of  iis  sublimity.  She  could 
not  measure  its  height,  more  than  the  unaccustomed  sighl 
can  gauge  the  heighl  of  mountains;  bu1  in  some  wa\  ii 
moved  and  awed  her  as  the  majesty  of  the  everlasting 
hills  will  do  those  who  gaze  upward  to  them. 


252  TRICOTRIN, 

She  looked  at  him  one  moment,  then  threw  herself  into 
his  arms  with  all  her  childhood's  abandonment. 

"Ah  !  How  selfish  you  must  think  me!  If  you  had 
only  let  me  die  when  you  first  found  me,  what  burden 
and  what  trouble  you  had  been  spared!" 

"Chut!"  he  said  softly,  though  there  was  an  infinite 
sadness  in  his  eyes  as  they  lookod  down  on  her.  "  Where 
two  love,  one  of  them  is  always  selfish.  And — as  for  the 
other  thing — not  till  you  regret  your  life,  my  Waif,  shall 
I  ever  regret  it  for  you.  If  you  stain  it,  or  learn  to  feel 
it  wearisome  to  bear,  then  indeed,  but  then  only,  shall  I 
lament  the  hour  in  which  I  saved  it." 

"  But  I  nave  been  only  a  care,  a  cost,  a  trouble  to  you  ? 
I  have  done  nothing  to  repay  you?" 

"Pooh  !  little  one!"  he  said  lightly,  for  in  that  moment 
he  felt  too  keenly  to  dare  trust  himself  to  earnest  words. 
"  Floating  a  Waif  is  a  more  innocent  indulgence  than  most 
of  our  masculine  extravagancies  ;  and  as  for  payment — - 
when  I  hear  you  laugh  that  is  quittance  enough.  And 
you  have  laughed  often,  I  think,  in  your  fifteen  years  of 
existence." 

"Ah,  yes!"  sighed  Viva;  aud  for  the  moment  that  old 
life  by  the  river  side,  that  she  had  grown  so  impatient  to 
get  rid  of  for  the  "great  world,"  looked  wonderfully  fair 
to  her — transfigured  as  the  golden  light  of  distance  alone 
can  transfigure  either  the  landscapes  or  the  years  we  leave 
behind  us. 

"  That  is  right,"  he  said,  briefly.  "  Whatever  the  future 
brings  you,  it  will  be  well  to  have  had  that  laughter. 
And  now,  make  yourself  ready;  since  this  thing  is  to  be 
done,  do  it  quickly." 

He  moved  to  the  window  as  he  spoke ;  he  was  im- 
patient of  all  bitter  moments ;  his  philosophies  and  his 
instincts  alike  rebelled  against  pain  as  the  great  foe  of 
animal  life  and  of  mental  peace ;  he  was  intolerant  of  de- 
pression, and  resisted  all  calamity  that  strove  to  weigh 
him  down;  as  he  would  have  resisted  a  physical  disease. 

Opposite  him,  in  the  little  casement  under  the  gable, 
sat  the  grisette;  her  work  had  fallen  in  her  lap;  her 
tearful  eyes  were  gazing  vacantly  out  into  the  street. 

Much  the  same  pang  ached  in  both  their  hearts;  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  253 

woman  brooded  fondly  over  hers,  the  man  thrust  his 
passionately  away.  To  her  there  was  a  Lingering  sweet- 
ness in  it  that  she  clung  to;  to  him  there  was  an  in- 
tolerable weakness  in  it  that  he  strove  with  all  his  force 
to  uproot. 

They  both  knew  that  they  who  go  to  the  Rome  of 
their  desires  never  return  to  those  whom  they  have  loved 
and  left  in  the  old  deserted  land. 

Viva  was  quickly  ready,  and  at  his  side;  she  was  in 
eager,  tremulous  excitement.  She  was  glad  that  her 
desires  had  been  granted  thus;  and  yet  she  was  fearful, 
after  her  past  night's  deception,  of  what  vipers  might  lie 
curled  in  the  purple  passion-flowers  of  the  world's  pride 
and  pleasure. 

Tricotrin  said  little  on  their  way,  a  way  that  led 
through  country  fields  and  the  fragrance  of  the  Ville 
d'Avroe  woods,  out  toward  where  a  summer  villa  stood, 
sheltered  under  reddening  foliage  that  joined  the  forests  of 
Versailles. 

1  Ic:  lifted  her  from  the  covered  wagon  in  which  they 
had  driven,  and  walked  with  her  some  little  distance 
down  a  broad  tree-shadowed  lane.  It  was  now  almost 
dark.  At  the  end  of  the  road  were  the  gates  of  her  desti- 
nation. In  this  sunny  autumn  weather  the  Duchess  de 
Lira  preferred  this  light  and  pleasant  place  to  either  her 
great  palaces  in  the  Faubonrg,  or  her  chateau  under  the 
shadow  of  the  eastern  Pyrenees.  Outside  the  gates  he 
paused  a  moment;  there  was  no  one  in  sight  save  an  old 
man  sitting  under  one  of  the  sycamores  resting  with  a 
load  of  wood.  He  laid  his  hand  on  Viva's  shoulder,  and 
looked  down  into  her  eves. 

"My  child,  you  have  your  heart's  desire;  you  go 
among  'greal  people.'  It  may  make  your  happiness; 
it  may  make  your  misery.  Granted  wishes  are  some- 
times sell-sown  curses.  Whichever  it  be,  remember — 
go  where  you  will,  do  what  you  may,  you  can  always 
come  back  to  me  !" 

The  infinite  tenderness  of  the  words  raised  something 
akin  to  terror  in  her;  her  color  went  and  canfe  in  rapid 
changes. 

22 


254  TRICOTRTN, 

"  But  it  is  only  for  a  little  time !"  she  said,  rapidly. 
"It  is  no  separation?  I  shall  be  with  you  again  so 
soon?" 

He  smiled:  the  smile  that  smote  her  heart  with  re- 
morse, though  why  she  could  not  tell. 

"A  week  is  an  age  sometimes  at  your  years.  I  hardly 
think  you  will  remain  or  return  to  me — the  same.  But 
that  we  must  chance,  grand'mere  and  I.  Anyhow,  love 
that  has  not  been  put  to  the  test  is  no  love ;  and  the 
young  bird  that  has  never  been  allowed  to  fly,  likes  its 
cage  from  habit,  not  choice.  Go  within.  I  have  rung; 
they  will  come  to  you.     In  eight  days  you  shall  see  me 


again." 


Before  she  could  reply  or  resist  he  had  closed  the  gate 
gently  on  her,  leaving  her  standing  within  the  enchanted 
ground  of  her  new  paradise,  and  had  gone  back,  alone, 
through  the  checkered  twilight  shadow  of  the  road.  The 
echo  of  his  steps  upon  the  gravel,  growing  fainter  and 
fainter  as  he  passed  away,  filled  her  with  a  sudden  sense 
of  loneliness  and  of  ingratitude. 

"  Oh,  come  back,  come  back!"  she  cried.  "  I  do  not  want 
any  one  but  you; — I  do  not  wish  to  stay." 

But  the  words  did  not  pierce  the  metal  gates  that  were 
now  closed  between  them  ;  and  a  servant,  waiting  for 
her,  approached  her  with  so  courteous  a  deference,  that 
she  forced  back  her  tears,  and  began  to  dream  again  that 
this  was  the  commencement  of  that  living  fairy-tale,  in 
which  she,  from  the  obscure  chrysalis  of  a  Waif  and  Stray, 
would  change  into  the  winged  and  glorious  butterfly  of 
an  omnipotent  Princess. 

Through  a  wilderness  of  floral  beauty,  through  gor- 
geous autumn  flowers,  blooming  and  blazing  around 
snowy  statues  and  sparkling  fountain-spray,  through 
aisles  of  scented  bushes  and  of  orange-trees  powdered 
with  their  yellowing  balls,  she  was  led  into  the  house. 
For  the  third  time  she  was  in  an  abode  made  luxurious 
and  elegant  by  wealth ;  for  the  third  time,  the  glow  and 
shadow  and  subdued  brilliancy  of  gold  and  silver,  paint- 
ings and  statuary,  velvets  and  marbles,  were  about  her' 
as  she  moved ;  for  the  third  time,  the  fragrance,  the  grace, 
the  stillness,  the  indescribable  beauties  of  good  taste,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         255 

of  choice  art,  filled  the  chambers  through  which  she  wen  I. 
And  they  had  lost  none  of  the  unutterable  delight  which 
at  the  chateau  of  Villiers  and  the  house  of  Coriolis  they 
had  possessed  for  her.  She  drew  a  deep  breath  as  she 
saw  and  felt  their  sorcery;  she  already  forgot  the  echo 
of  the  steps,  at  whose  retreating  sound  her  tears  had 
started  but  a  few  moments  earlier. 

She  saw  no  one  in  any  of  the  rooms  and  galleries  she 
traversed.  Her  conductress,  a  Creole  woman,  took  her 
in  silence  through  them,  and  only  spoke  when,  at  length, 
she  threw  one  door  open. 

"  Mademoiselle  will  wish  to  rest ;  this  is  Mademoiselle's 
chamber,"  she  said,  with  one  hand  lifting  up  the  silk 
curtains  before  the  entrance. 

Viva  gave  a  cry  of  delight — the  same  childlike,  eager, 
rapturous  cry,  as  when  in  the  wine  country  she  had  found 
a  purple  butterfly,  or  heard  a  new  legend  from  grand '- 
mere. 

The  small  octagon  chamber  glistened  with  azure  and 
white;  a  silver-winged  angel  hovered  over  the  little  se- 
cpiestered  bed;  flowers  in  profusion  filled  each  nook  and 
corner;  a  little  fragrant  fountain  played  in  a  jasper  basin; 
between  the  mirrors  was  a  single  picture,  a  Proserpine 
wandering  among  lilies  and  asphodels;  beyond,  through 
the  open  window,  lay  the  gardens,  and  avenues,  and  or- 
angeries. 

Viva  stood  in  a  trance  of  enchantment,  flushed,  mute, 
beatified. 

The  curtain  fell  behind  her;  she  was  left  alone.  Her 
lirsl  impulse  was  to  turn  to  the  mirror;  her  next  to  gaze 
around  the  chamber  that  was  "hers." 

The  little  wooden  chamber  under  the  ivy-covered  eaves 
in  her  old  home  had  been  kept  lor  her  at  t  he  cosl  of  many 
a  personal  sacrifice,  and  the  trifles  that  adorned  it  of 
quaint  carving,  or  of  oil  sketches,  had  been  the  gifts  of 
most  tender  pity  or  mosl  generous  love.  This  room,  bo 
fair  to  her  si»-ht,  was  but  one  among  many  similar  in 
the  bonse  of  a  great  personage,  and  all  its  beauties  had 
been  prepared,  not  for  her,  hut  for  any  other  visitant  who 
might  be  guesl  there. 

Yet,    how   mean    and    poor   looked    that    little    room    of 


256  TRICOTRIN, 

grand'mere's!  how  exquisite  and  luxurious  a  nest  was 
this! 

"The  fairies  have  remembered  me  at  last!"  she  cried 
aloud,  with  her  hands  clasped  above  her  head  in  breath- 
less ecstasy. 

And  she — had  forgotten  one  who  never  had  forgotten 
her  through  all  the  years  wherein  the  fairies  had  been 
silent  to  her  call. 


CHAPTER  XXIY. 


When  he  went  thither  again  at  the  end  of  the  eight 
days,  the  servants  brought  him  a  little  note.  It  was  very 
short,  and  like  a  child's. 

"My  best  Friend, — I  am  so  happy  ;  I  never  dreamed 
that  any  life  could  be  one-half  so  beautiful.  They  take 
me  to-day  to  see  a  great  review  of  soldiers.  I  fear  that  I 
shall  miss  you.  If  I  do,  will  you  leave  word  whether  I 
may  stay  here  three  months  ?  The  duchess  has  asked  me, 
and  I  hope  very  much  you  will  .say — yes.     Your  own 

"  Viva. 

"My  love  to  grand'mere  and  Mistigri.  The  duke  is 
so  good  to  me;  and  has  bought  me  such  magnificent 
things." 

He  read  it,  crushed  it  in  his  hand,  and  asked  them  for  a 
pencil.  Then  on  its  little,  torn  envelope  he  wrote  the  one 
word  of  assent  required. 

"Give  that  to — Mademoiselle,"  he  said  simply,  as  he 
left  it  in  the  servant's  hand,  and  went  out  from  the  gates. 

Mistigri  trembled  as  she  looked  up  in  his  face  that  was 
white  as  with  the  whiteness  of  death. 

The  months  went  by,  and  Tricotrin  might  have  been 
numbered  among  the  dead  for  any  sign  that  came  to  her 
from  him.  Where  he  went  no  one  knew.  The  fishers  of 
the  western  coast  could  have  told,  and  they  only. 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         25? 

The  weather  was  wild  and  fierce ;  storms  dashed  the 
shores  and  beat  the  boats  to  pieces  ;  the  nights  were  filled 
with  hurricanes,  and  the  beach  was  strewn  with  drift- 
wood and  the  flotsom  and  jetsom  of  barks  broken  on 
the  rocks.  All  through  that  bitter  time  of  the  early  win- 
ter he  was  with  them.  It  was  no  new  thing ;  and  they 
were  well  used  to  see  him  in  the  driving  gales, — with  the 
winds  tossing  his  hair,  and  the  rains  beating  on  his  bare 
chest  and  shoulders,  and  the  breakers  leaping  on  him  as 
on  a  granite  block, — bring  in  some  fishing-boat,  whose 
load  would  be  the  sole  support  of  some  drowned  sailor's 
widow,  or  launch  some  life-raft  through  the  surge  to  reach 
the  stricken  vessel  that,  reeling  and  dismasted,  plowed 
the  blackened  sea. 

Few  winters  passed  but  brought  him,  in  the  time  of 
peril,  to  the  Biscay-beaten  coasts.  He  loved  sea  and 
storm  like  some  Norse  viking  of  the  old  wild  years;  the 
rising  of  the  sullen  winds  was  to  him  as  the  trumpet -note 
to  the  war-horse;  the  exultant  courage  in  him  delighted 
in  the  contest  with  the  waves;  and  he  loved  the  brave, 
rough,  patient,  melancholy,  great-souled  people  who  lived 
beside  the  everlasting  waters,  and  gained  something  of 
the  grandeur  and  the  poetry  of  those  waters  in  the  niiilst 
of  so  much  rugged  poverty,  so  hard  a  conflict  for  the  hread 
of  life.  For  many  years  he  had  appeared  among  them 
at  such  seasons ;  and  in  the  superstition  engendered  by 
t  he  mingled  tragedy  and  simplicity  of  their  existence,  I  hey 
looked  upon  him  as  on  one  of  more  than  mortal  strength 
and  power,  at  whose  bidding  the  seas  released  their  prey, 
ami  delivered  up  their  dead. 

That  lie  made  music  at  their  feasts,  that  he  flung  their 
nets  over  his  shoulder,  that  be  stacked  sea-weed  for  their 
aged  and  infirm,  thai  he  mended  their  sails  singing  as  he 
sat  on  the  sands  some  of  their  old-world  romances,  that 
lie  laughed  with  their  handsome  fisher-maidens  pushing  a 
boal  through  the  surf. — all  these  things  had  not  made 
them  the  less  deem  him  half  a  <j<»1.  though  his  vigorous 
limbs  were  clothed  in  their  garb,  and  he  had  been  more 
than  once  dashed,  bruised  and  senseless,  on  their  rocks  in 
vain  effort  to  succor  Borne  sinking  vessel, 

These  months  in  the  late  autumn  he  had  passed  among 


09* 


258  TRICOTRIN, 

thein,  in  the  salt,  hard,  fresh  seafaring  life.  If  pain  were 
on  him  he  never  let  it  brood  on  undisturbed;  if  regret  or 
desire  haunted  him  he  exorcised  them  by  some  means  or 
other ;  his  whole  temperament  rebelled  against  the  weight 
of  care  or  sorrow,  and  sought  light  as  instinctively  as  do 
the  sunflowers. 

Yet,  against  all  his  efforts  and  all  the  happy  philoso- 
phies that  had  kept  youth  so  bright  and  ardent  in  him 
through  years  that  bring  the  burdens  of  age  to  many  men, 
against  his  will  and  his  endeavor  he  could  not  turn  his 
thoughts  from  Viva.  He  could  not  tear  out  from  him  the 
jealous,  carking  care  that  filled  him  when  he  thought  of 
her  in  strangers'  hands,  the  hot,  senseless  hope,  which 
lived  in  him  against  all  reason,  that  she  would  cling  to 
him  still  in  preference  to  the  things  of  pomp  and  power. 
He  grew  to  hate  his  love  for  her — but  never  to  hate  her. 
He  knew  that  it  had  lost  the  purity  and  the  peace  which 
had  sanctified  it  for  so  long ;  he  knew  that  it  was  the  love 
of  a  man  for  the  fair  eyes,  and  the  smiling  mouth,  and  the 
white  limbs  of  the  woman's  beauty  that  tempts  him.  That 
love  he  had  known  oftentimes ;  but  it  had  never  been  a 
gay,  wind-tossed,  chance-sown  flower  in  his  path ;  not  a 
long-cherished  blossom  like  this,  with  thorns  hid  in  the 
heart  of  its  sweet  white  leaves  to  wound  the  breast  upon 
which  it  was  clasped  in  cai'esses. 

He  hated  the  passion  that  had  sprung  up  in  him  from 
out  of  the  kindly  and  pitying  care  he  had  given  her:  it 
seemed  to  him  to  poison  all  the  tenderness  he  had  felt  for 
her  in  the  time  when  his  hand  had  played  with  her  hair,  or 
his  lips  had  touched  her  cheek  in  the  unthinking  and  negli- 
gent fondness  that  he  might  have  felt  for  a  favorite  dog. 
It  was  on  the  impulse  of  that  hate  for  his  own  instinct  of 
jealous  possession  that  he  had  embraced  the  offer  of  a  new 
life  for  her,  dreading  lest  his  love  made  him  blind  to  what 
was  best  for  her,  dreading  lest  it  warped  him  to  injustice 
and  to  egotism. 

He,  careless  and  heedless  in  so  much,  watched  with 
keenest  scruple  his  own  nature,  lest,  under  the  angelic 
guise  of  tenderness  for  her,  there  should  be  the  hellish 
snake  of  envious  desire.  He  had  served  her ;  all  she  had, 
and  all  she  was,  she  owed  to  him  ;  at  his  will  he  could 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         259 

have  cast  her  out  to  the  starvation  of  an  unowned  beg- 
gar-girl:  for  this  cause  he  held  himself  debarred  by  all 
common  law  of  honor  from  any  shape  of  tyrannous 
usurpation  over  that  which  lay  thus  wholly  at  his  mercy. 
The  titles  that  other  men  might  have  thought  gave  him 
the  rights  to  do  with  her  as  he  would,  were  in  his  sight 
the  strongest  forbiddance  from  all  such  rights'  despotic 
exercise. 

Once  he  had  saved  a  bird  whose  wing  was  broken  ;  it 
had  been  in  his  earliest  boyhood,  and  he  had  grown  to 
love  fervently  the  creature  he  had  succored,  whose  shat- 
tered pinion  he  had  bound,  and  whose  food  and  water 
and  sod  of  grass  had  been  his  daily  care  for  mouths 
through  a  keen  snow-laden  winter.  With  the  spring, 
just  as  its  song  grew  music  on  his  ear,  and  the  brightness 
of  its  pretty  eyes  rewarded  him,  the  little  lark  fluttered 
its  feathers  in  impatient  longing,  and  beat  its  beak  against 
the  cage  that  had  so  long  been  its  sanctuary  from  the 
winds  and  the  hail  that  had  struck  so  many  birds  down, 
frozen,  on  the  ice-bound  earth. 

He,  a  mere  child,  had  wept  grievously  as  he  saw  that 
feverish  fretting  of  the  lark  which  wished  to  leave  him; 
some  others  standing  by  laughed  to  see  his  tears:  "  Silly 
lad!"  they  cried,  "  can  the  bird  escape  you ?  Bend  its 
cage-wires  closer ;  so  shall  you  always  have  it  with  you." 
13ut  the  boy  had  shaken  his  head. 

"  I  have  done  it  good,  shall  1  do  it  evil  ?  It  must  be 
free  to  stay  or  to  go,  else  what  is  its  love  worth  ?" 

And  he  had  opened  the  door  of  the  cage,  ami  turned  it 
toward  the  west  where  the  sun  was  setting:  then  he 
waited  ami  watched. 

The  lark  saw  the  glow  of  the  sun,  and  moved,  ami 
lighted  awhile  on  the  edge  of  its  prison-house;  then  with 
one  glorious  hurst  of  song  soared  upward,  higher  ami 
higher,  toward  the  golden  radiance  of  the  skies. 

He  looked  alter  it  as  it  Hew,  with  the  ureal  tears  blind- 
ing his  eyes;   but  he  smiled  as  lie    heard  the    hymn  of  its 

joy. 

"  It  is  happy,"  he  said  gently,  as  he  hung  the  cage  on 
the  bough  of' an  oak.  "And— when  the  winter  comes 
back  perhaps  it  will  he  glad  to  come  to,,." 


2G0  TRICOTRIN, 

But  the  bird  never  returned,  though  the  empty  cage 
stood  open  all  the  seasons  through. 

The  same  impulse  as  had  moved  him  then,  moved  him 
now.  As  he  had  given  his  lark  its  liberty,  so  he  gave 
her  freedom  to  his  foundling.  What  was  fidelity  worth 
only  born  of  coercion  ?  The  song  of  the  lark  had  beeu 
sweet  to  him  ;  but  its  melody  would  have  been  jarred  for- 
ever had  it  come  from  the  throat  of  a  captive.  The  love 
of  the  child  had  been  sweet  to  him  ;  but  its  caress  would 
have  been  embittered  to  him  forever  had  it  come  from 
lips  on  whose  breath  there  had  hovered  a  sigh. 

Let  her  go ! — the  child  like  the  lark. 

If  the  summer  of  other  lands  seemed  fairer  to  her  sight 
she  must  be  free  to  take  flight  to  them ;  if  the  old  foster- 
ing care  seemed  dearer  than  the  glow  of  foreign  suns, 
then  only  would  the  love  be  willingly  given,  and  not 
prison-born.  Any  way,  the  door  was  opened ;  and 
though  the  ingrate  should  wing  swift  way  to  vapor- 
palaces  of  sunlit  cloud,  still  would  the  deserted  refuge 
wait,  unclosed;  in  case  that  storm,  and  snow,  and  driving 
blasts  should  ever  bring  the  wanderer  home,  with  droop- 
ing wing  and  breaking  heart. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

The  thirtieth  day  of  the  last  month  came.  He  passed 
once  more  up  the  linden-lined  road.  The  bounteousness 
of  color  that  had  so  late  made  the  earth  beautiful  with 
fruit  and  flower  had  shriveled,  dropped,  and  perished. 
Wild  winds  were  tossing  the  russet  leaves,  and  the  great 
woods  were  bare  and  brown.  There  was  winter  in  the 
air ;  and  all  the  spikes  of  grass  were  white  with  frost. 
In  so  brief  a  space  all  the  brilliancy  and  wealth  of  autumn 
had  died  away  as  though  it  had  never  been.  Was  the 
brief  time  long  enough  likewise  to  kill  the  young  warmth 
of  a  girl's  heart  as  it  had  killed  the  color  of  the  earth  ? 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AXD  STRAY.         201 

He  traversed  the  grounds  unobserved  ;  it  was  a  wild 
and  gloomy  day,  and  no  one  was  at  work  in  the  gardens. 
The  house  itself  was  long  and  low,  with  broad  windows 
that  nearly  touched  the  ground,  and  had  a  terrace  run- 
ning beneath  thetn.  The  rooms  within,  at  all  times 
visible,  were  doubly  clearly  seen  from  the  bright  light  of 
wood  fires  inside  them  that  glowed  through  their  lozenge- 
shaped  panes. 

Instinctively  before  one  he  paused. 

In  the  full  illumination  of  ruddy  color  that  was  re- 
flected back  from  the  mirror-lined  walls  of  the  room,  and 
glowed  upon  the  rose  hue  of  its  velvet  hangings,  he  saw 
her;  and  his  heart  beat  thick  with  longing  and  with  fear, 
with  hope  and  with  despair. 

She  stood  upon  the  hearth,  in  the  full  warmth  of  the  fire- 
flames,  and  was  laughing,  with  her  head  thrown  back,  as 
she  tossed  to  and  fro  in  the  air  a  pretty  golden  toy,  a  Pro- 
tean A rlecchino  jeweled  and  enameled,  that  went  through 
changeful  antics,  as  he  was  tossed  or  poised.  Her  face  was 
radiant  with  laughter  at  the  puppet's  evolutions;  dainty 
nobes  clothed  her  tall  slender  limbs,  and  trailed  behind  her 
on  the  floor;  gold  buckles  glittered  on  her  pretty  feet; 
and  her  hair,  turned  backward  in  the  Louis  Quatorze 
fashion,  was  fastened  by  an  arrow  of  gold  half  hidden 
in  its  rippling  clusters;  wealth  and  rank  had  set  their 
seals  on  her;  she  looked  no  more  a  child,  but  a  beautiful 
woman. 

What  need  had  he  to  enter?  His  question  was  an- 
swered by  his  first  glance  at  her  face. 

Had  the  lark  come  back  from  its  flight  through  the  sun- 
light ether?  Would  the  girl  come  back  from  her  ascent 
into  the  luxury  of  riches  ? 

His  heart  stood  st  ill,  his  hope  died  out,  as  he  beheld  her. 
With  all  that  radiance  on  her  face,  where  was  the  shade 
of  one  regret?  With  all  that  mirth  upon  her  lips,  where 
was  the  sigh  of  one  remembrance  1  He  bad  losl  her  for- 
ever. And  he  knew  his  loss  as  well  as  though  he  had 
seen  her  laid  down  in  her  grave. 

Slowly,  and  with  one  long  backward  look,  he  turned 
and  moved  away  toward  the  dark  cold  shelter  of  the 
woods;  .and  she,  unconscious  all  the  while — laughed  oft, 


262  TRICOTRIN, 

tossing  her  Arlecchino  upward  in  the  fire-glow  till  his 
jewels  sparkled  and  his  silvered  bells  rang  again. 

It  was  two  hours  later  when  Tricotrin  returned,  and 
the  dark  clay  was  waning. 

He  desired,  then,  to  see  the  Duke  de  Lira.  He  was  ad- 
mitted at  once,  and  conducted  to  where  the  nobleman 
spent  most  of  his  hours  when  in  his  mother's  villa ;  a 
small,  lofty,  book-lined  room,  dusky  even  at^midday,  yet 
rich  •  in  bronze,  and  statuaiy,  and  antique  things  that 
gleamed  curiously  from  out  the  twilight. 

Tricotrin  went  quickly  forward,  and  spoke  ere  his  host 
could  speak. 

"  I  have  kept  my  word :  keep  you  yours.  Let  me  see 
Yiva.  No  !  do  not  speak.  Have  patience  with  me.  I 
desire  to  see  her  first  and  hear  you  later.  I  address  the 
request  to  you  since  she  is  beneath  your  roof,  but  my 
right  to  her  is  not  wholly  gone ;  by  it  I  come  to  claim 
her." 

The  Duke  de  Lira  looked  at  him  in  silence  ;  his  face  was 
pale,  his  blouse  was  wet  with  night  dews,  his  eyes  were 
full  of  speechless  woe,  like  the  dumb  woe  of  a  dog.  There 
was  that  in  him  which  made  his  hearer  obey  the  abrupt 
and  fiery  discourtesy  of  the  command. 

"  I  will  send  her  to  you  here,"  he  said  as  briefly  as  he 
rose,  and  passed  out  through  the  door  of  his  chamber, 
and  closed  it  behind  him.  Some  moments  drifted  by, 
whether  many  or  few  he  who  waited  could  not  have  told  ; 
then  the  door  reopened,  and,  with  a  light  swift  bound,  the 
gay  grace  of  her  form  came  toward  him,  all  luster  and 
light  in  the  gloom,  with  the  shining  Arlecchino  still  in  her 
hand.  It  was  with  a  cry  of  welcome  and  delight  that 
she  sprang  to  him  ;  and  it  thrilled  through  him  as  the 
song  of  the  lark  had  thrilled  through  his  heart  as  a  child. 

He  caught  her  with  unconscious  passion  in  his  arms, 
and  kissed  her  with  kisses  that  burned  her  cheek  like  fire ; 
then  as  suddenly  he  loosened  her  from  his  embrace  and 
put  her  from  him.  He  remembered  that  he  had  no  right 
to  force  on  her  caresses,  for  which  in  a  brief  while  she 
might  blush  with  shame,  no  right  to  steal  their  virginity 
from  lips  that  another  might  soon  seek  with  a  lover's  or 
a  husband's  title. 


THE  STORY    OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         263 

She,  all  innocent  of  his  thoughts,  laughed  up  in  his 
eyes:  her  hair  had  been  ruffled  by  his  touch,  and  her  deli- 
cate dress  stained  by  the  night  dews  on  his  own  ;  and  the 
toy  she  held  bruised  and  bent  by  the  violence  of  his  cm- 
brace. 

"  Oh  the  poor  Arlecchino!"  she  cried,  "how  you  have 
hurt  him  1  And  he  cost  a  thousand  francs  in  the  Palais 
Royal  yesterday." 

With  an  inexpressible  impulse  he  dashed  the  puppet 
from  her  hold  on  to  the  ground. 

"That  is  how  you  greet  me  !" 

She,  who  had  never  heard  that  bitter,  burning  passion 
in  his  voice  before,  stood  silent,  trembling,  afraid,  amazed, 
gazing  at  him  with  her  bright  large  eyes.  She  did  not 
know  what  she  had  done. 

"  I  did  not  mean  anything,"  she  murmured,  "  it  is  only 
— the  Arlecchino  amused  me  so,  and  he  is  broken." 

The  words  recalled  him  to  himself,  and  roused  him  from 
the  delirium  of  wounded  love  that  had  found  its  violence 
an  issue  in  the  toy's  destruction.  lie  stooped  for  the 
puppet,  and  raised  it;  his  rival  of  tinsel  and  clockwork 
that  was  before  liim  in  the  thoughts  of  the  creature  who 
owed  him  her  salvation !  His  voice  trembled,  but  was 
very  gentle  as  he  answered  her. 

"Forgive  me,  Viva:  I  erred  greatly.  I  had  no  right  to 
bruise  your  plaything,  above  all  as  1  have  not  a  thousand 
francs  to  give  for  any  toy!  But  I  have  skill  at  these 
things,  and  I  will  mend  his  injuries;  and — for  my  vio- 
lence give  me  your  pardon." 

The  words  found  their  instant  way  to  the  still  fond 
heart  of  the  child. 

"Oh,  what  do  I  care  for  the  toy ?"  she  cried.  "The 
duke  will  buy  me  another.  I  was  only  afraid  I  had 
angered  you  ;  and — I  am  so  glad  to  see  yon  once  more  I" 

He  answered  her  nothing,  but  stooped  his  head  over 
the  Arlecchino.  The  welcome  was  little  worth,  H  wae 
the  welcome  of  a  playful  unconcerned  affection;  and. 
already  she  looked  to  a  rich  man  for  the  solace  of  her 
woes,  the  provision  of  her  pleasures  ! 

"Viva  looked  at  him  earnestly,  in  some  perplexit}  ;  she 
was  afraid  that  she  had  pained  him,  bu1  also  Bhe  was 


264  TR1C0TRIN, 

irritated  that  he  should  have  acted  so  strangely.  Three 
months  had  been  sufficient  space  for  her  to  have  learned 
to  look  upon  herself  as  a  thing  of  beauty  and  of  witchery 
to  whom  all  should  bow  and  give  way. 

There  was  a  long  silence  between  them  ;  a  silence  that 
she  spent,  almost  instinctively  in  noting  the  stains  of  the 
grasses  and  the  rains  upon  his  linen,  and  thinking  how 
much  nobler  he  would  look  if  he  wore  velvet,  like  the 
men  whom  she  had  seen  of  late.  The  feminine  mind 
played  with  frivolities  and  caprices  while  the  masculine 
soul  suffered  a  mute  martyrdom. 

At  last  he  looked  up,  laying  the  puppet  down. 

"  The  toy  will  be  none  the  worse  ;  I  will  remedy  what 
is  amiss.  And  now,  have  you  forgotten,  Viva,  that  this 
day  is  the  last  of  those  which  you  were  asked  to  pass 
here  ?" 

She  started;  and  a  flash  of  remembrance  and  of  terror 
came  over  all  her  face. 

"  I  had  forgotten  it,"  she  murmured. 

"  And — you  regret  it  ?" 

She  looked  down ;  and  he  saw  her  mouth  quiver.  She 
said  nothing. 

"You  have  been  happy  here  then?"  he  asked. 

"  Oh  ! — happy  ? — yes  1"  she  murmured,  the  flood-gates 
of  her  enthusiastic  speech  opened  at  last.  "Happy? 
Why !  it  is  like  enchantment  I  You  do  not  know  how 
beautiful  the  life  is  1  They  have  been  so  good  to  me. 
They  have  given  me  a  little  horse,  snow-white,  and  a 
hundred  pretty  things  like  Arlecchino,  and  many  dresses, 
all  as  beautiful  as  this,  and  some  more  so;  and  then  every 
nook  and  corner  of  the  house  is  like  a  picture ;  and  one 
has  never  even  to  pour  out  a  glass  of  water  for  one's  self; 
and  my  own  room  is  so  exquisite,  and  the  duke  is  always 
giving  me  some  new  surprise  or  pleasure  ;  you  do  not 
know  what  it  is  I  And  then  one  feels  so  great  too — like 
a  princess — among  it  all !" 

"  And  who  loves  you — whom  do  you  love  in  it?" 

The  question  was  passionate  in  its  scornful  demand,  its 
vehement  reminder  of  the  one  thing  lacking. 

"Love?"  she  echoed.  "Oh,  no  one!  But  then — it 
is  all  so  magnificent ;  it  does  not  matter  about  that." 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND    STRAY.         265 

"You  have  learnt  the  world's  lesson  swiftly!"  he  mut- 
tered, as  he  swung  from  her. 

The  .heartless  creed  couched  in  the  guileless  words 
struck  him  with  an  intolerable  suffering.  What  avail  to 
have  given  her  care  and  tenderness  for  all  these  years  ! — 
a  month  of  luxury  outweighed  them  all ! 

"I  am  very  different  to  what  I  was!"  Viva  retorted, 
with  a  certain  petulance  and  offended  pride,  as  instinct- 
ively she  glanced  at  herself  in  one  of  the  mirrors. 
Although  it  was  twilight  she  could  see  the  gleam  of  her 
gold  arrow  in  her  hair,  and  the  trailing  grace  of  her  azure 
skirts. 

"  You  could  not  speak  a  sadder  truth  !" 

The  words  were  hoarse  in  his  throat  with  the  acuteness 
of  disappointed  mortification.  Unconsciously  he  had 
Imped,  far  more  than  he  knew,  that  the  ties  of  old  asso- 
ciation and  of  gratitude  mighl  have  been  strong  enough 
to  withstand  the  temptations  that  sought  to  break  them 
asunder.  Unknown  i<>  himself'  the  idea  that  the  gilded 
restrictions  of  a  lofty  station  would  gall  her,  much  as 
they  would  have  galled  him,  had  misled  him  ;  and,  rely- 
ing on  the  free-born  temper  of  the  child,  he  had  forgotten 
the  ambitious  vanities  that  ran  with  it. 

"A  sad  truth!"  echoed  Viva,  with  all  her  graceful 
petulance  in  arms  against  the  attack  upon  her  vanity. 
while  her  eyes  soughl  the  beloved  reflection  of  herself  in 
the  mirror.  ''A  very  happy  one,  surely  1  You  mighl  as 
well  say  ih  at  it  is  sal  that  the  exquisite  little  old  duchess 
here,  who  is  jusl  like  one  of  her  own  porcelain  figures, 
does  not  resemble  grand'mere  clicking  over  the  snow  in 
her  wooden  shoes,  or  peeling  onions  to  put  in  the  soup- 
pot  !  • 

"For  shame,  Viva  !"  he  cried,  vehemently.  "Have 
you  less  gratitude  than  the  straj  Iambs  feel  \'<<r  the  bands 
that  fed  the  in  when  tbey  were  motherless  ?  Four  duchess  1 
1  know  little  of  her ;  Inn  I  know  tie, t  if  all  her  life  through 
she  have  had  the  truth,  and  courage,  and  charity,  and 
chastity  of  the  brave  old  woman  you  despise,  it  will  be 
well  for  her  when  her  lasl  hour  comes.  What  think  \  m 
the  noble  old  soul,  who  wearies  for  a  sight  of  your  face  as 

2  I 


2(36  TRICOTRIN, 

she  sits  by  her  lonely  hearth,  would  feel  if  she  had  heard 
your  woi'ds  now  ?" 

The  rebuke  was  passionately  uttered ;  it  touched  her 
to  remembrance,  contrition,  and  all  the  affection  still 
strong  in  her  beneath  the  selfishness  that  stifled  it.  She 
sprang  to  him  with  all  the  charming  impulsive  grace  of 
her  childhood. 

"  She  would  call  me  wicked  and  worthless,  as  I  am. 
My  tongue  should  have  been  cut  out  before  it  should  have 
breathed  a  word  against  her.  Dear,  old  grand'mere  !  I 
care  for  her  so  much,  I  do  indeed.  It  is  only  everything 
here  is  so  different :  it  makes  me  forget,  I  think ;  it  turns 
my  head  dizzy  like  wine  I" 

"  The  wine  of  flattered  vanity — yes  !  Heads  wiser 
and  older  than  yours  grow  drunk  on  it,"  he  said,  with  a 
quick,  impatient  sigh  as  he  turned  slightly  from  her. 

"  You  think  me  cruel  and  foolish  then?"  she  murmured, 
with  a  touch  of  piteousness  ;  her  reverence  and  love  for 
him  were  stronger  than  anything  else  as  yet  in  her,  and 
were  making  her  odious  in  her  own  sight  if  she  were 
unworthy  in  his. 

He  looked  down  on  her  with  a  smile,  whose  sadness 
and  whose  tenderness  she  could  not  measure,  for  they 
were  beyond  her  knowledge. 

"A  little  cruel — youth  always  is  in  its  own  intense  self- 
absorption  ;  and — as  for  foolishness,  we  cannot  look  for 
you  to  be  very  wise :  but  you  follow  the  world's  wisdom 
in  choosing  the  things  of  the  world.  But — how  will  it  be 
with  you,  Viva,  if  you  be  obliged  to  come  back  to  the 
only  life  I  can  give  you  V 

He  saw  her  turn  pale,  and  she  gave  a  swift,  upward 
glance  of  alarm. 

"  I  will  try  and  be  content,"  she  said,  softly;  and  her 
promise  was  sincere. 

But  scarcely  any  answer  could  have  stung  him  more. 
He  knew  what  content  that  has  to  be  striven  for  is  worth  ; 
he  felt  all  the  bitterness  of  such  niggard  return  for  the 
lavishness  of  his  own  donations.  He  repressed  the  words 
that  rose  to  his  lips.  She  had  been  so  utterly  and  entirely 
his  debtor  that  he  would  not  bring  against  her  the  charge 
of  her  ingratitude,  lest  it  should  seem  like  a  citation  of  his 
own  benefits. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         267 

"You  mean,"  he  said,  calmly,  at  length,  though  the 
calmness  was  very  hard  to  attain,  "thai  you  could  Dot 
be  siinpjy  and  sincerely  happy  in  your  own  life,  having* 
once  tasted  the  luxury  and  brilliancies  of  this?  You 
mean,  that  if  you  have  to  return  to  grand'mere  and  her 
cottage  vou  will  rebel  with  ceaseless  regret  against  them 
both?"* 

Viva  hung  her  head,  and  her  eyes  went  instinctively 
to  the  gleam  of  her  golden  arrow  in  the  mirror. 

"'No,  no,"  she  said,  with  the  tears  trembling  in  her 
voice.  "  It  is  not  that — I  love  you  so  dearly,  and 
grand'mere;  too — but  it  is  only " 

"Only  what?" 

"  That  I  think  I  am  born  for  this  life  !  I  always 
seemed,  somehow,  to  want  it  so  much,  even  when  1  did 
not  know  what  it  was  like!  The  duchess  herself,  who  is 
so  terribly  proud,  says  that  she  is  sure  I  come  from  some 
great  race  or  another.  And  it  may  be,  you  see, — why 
should  it  not  be,  when  all  this  that  is  great  seems  to  come 
to  me  by  nature?  You  remember,  that  English  lord 
with  the  beautiful  face  said  just  the  same  thing  when  he 
passed  me  ?' 

Tricotrin  made  no  answer. 

He  stood  in  the  shadow,  where  she  could  not  tell  what 
changes  swept  over  his  features.  It  cost  him  a  long 
efforl  ere  he  could  reply  to  her  as  he  desired  to  do — with- 
out trace  of  the  conflict  that  raged  in  him.  It  was  a 
strange  caprice  of  accident  by  which,  in  the  vevy  words 
with  which  she  endeavored  to  exculpate  herself,  she 
thrust  deeper  into  his  soul  the  iron    wherewith    .-he  so  all 

unconsciously  stabbed  him. 

"You  may  lie  right,"  he  said,  at  length.  "  Though 
beware  how  you  lean  on  the  thoughl  of  some  lofty  origin  ; 
it  will  he  but  a  broken  rrci\  at  best.  I  see,  however, 
plainly  one  thing, — that  whether  you  come  of  prince  or 
peasant,  you  will  never  again  lie  happy  in  obscurity. 
You  would  sooner  go  away  to  Coriolis  than  hack  to 
grand'mere !" 

Viva  colored  hotly. 

"Only  to  Coriolis'  fame:  it   has  greatness  in  a  way  at 

least." 


268  TRICOTRIN, 

"  Greatness!  Good  God !  how  irresistibly  what  is  vile 
looks  fair  in  the  eyes  of  woman  !  Pshaw  !  What  avail 
to  rear  you  fickle  exquisite  things  in  innocency  and  soli- 
tude ;  you  find  your  way  to  sin  and  its  pomps  as  instinct- 
ively as  mice  steal  out  to  honey  !" 

The  violence  of  the  words  escaped  him  ere  he  knew  it, 
in  the  insupportable  anguish  that  it  was  to  him  to  find 
her  thus  wedded  to  vain  things,  and  turned  from  all  that 
he  had  thought  would  grow  but  dearer  to  her  by  their 
absence. 

She — ignorant  of  his  meaning,  but  comprehending  only 
that  he  deemed  her  inconstant  and  unworthy — stood  with 
the  tears  in  her  eyes,  half  of  sorrow,  half  of  offense.  She 
knew  that  she  had  been  heartless  and  wrong,  but  also  she 
felt  herself  aggrieved. 

She  could  not  tell  that  the  feeling  which  moved  him 
was  the  consciousness  that  she,  unless  lifted  from  tempt- 
ation and  encircled  by  the  safeguards  of  a  sure  and  lofty 
position,  was  precisely  of  the  nature  that  would  be  swiftest 
drawn  down  to  gilded  evil,  that  would  be  easiest  lured  to 
drink  of  the  perfumed  wines  which  poison  as  they  intoxi- 
cate. The  very  ignorance  and  purity  of  her  mind  would 
lay  her  open  and  unguarded  to  the  seductions  which 
would  come  to  her  with  every  appeal  to  her  vanity  and 
her  tastes,  and  with  all  the  darker  traits  veiled  from  her 
and  unguessed.  He  saw  that,  had  the  desire  of  his  heart 
been  given  him,  and  the  creature  of  his  love  been  his, 
there  could  have  waited  for  him  in  the  future  no  other 
fate  than  the  fate  of  Bruno. 

She  did  not  know  this. 

The  lovely,  careless,  graceful  thing,  thinking  of  her 
golden  arrow  in  her  hair,  and  the  azure  glisten  of  her 
dress,  never  even  dreamed  of  the  sharp  despairing  torture 
of  the  man.  And  he  took  heed,  even  in  his  torture,  that 
she  should  not.  Why  vex  the  thoughtless  heart  of  a  child 
by  letting  her  behold  a  wound  which  she  could  neither 
measure  nor  comprehend  ? 

Not  to  pain  her  was  his  first  thought ;  and  he  crushed 
the  thorns  into  his  own  breast  unseen,  rather  than  let 
them  touch  the  hand  which  she  might  have  stretched  out 
in  pity,  had  she  known  that  they  were  wounding  him. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         2P>9 

There  was  a  long  silence  between  them  ;  when  he  spoke 
it  was  gently  and  gravely. 

"  I  seem  harsh  to  you,  my  child.  I  am  not  so,  God 
knows.  You  have  the  foibles  of  your  sex  in  a  strong 
degree;  but  we  should  scarce  expect  you  to  be  free  from 
them, — with  such  a  face  as  yours,  and  barely  sixteen 
summers  over  your  bright  head  !  You  are  enamored  of 
your  life  here,  doubtless,  though  to  my  thinking  the  life 
you  have  led  was  far  simpler,  and  freer,  and  happier.  But 
there  is  one  thing  you  seem  to  have  forgot,  Viva;  your 
sojourn  here  was  but  for  a  visit.  Though  you  have  been 
given  so  many  gifts,  you  are  but  a  stranger  ?" 

She  was  silent.  He  saw  once  more  the  quiver  of  dis- 
appointment on  her  mouth.  She  had  never  thought  of 
this — to  her  belief  it  had  been  the  fairies  who  had  brought 
her  to  her  rightful  heritage. 

"You  have  forgotten  that?"  he  pursued.  "You  have 
forgotten  then,  also,  that  to-day  you  were  to  go  back  with 
me  to  your  own  old  home;  since  no  guest  can  outstay 
the  limits  of  her  invitation  ?" 

Viva  lifted  her  head,  with  an  impetuous  passion  in  the 
gesture. 

"  Oh,  wait,  wait! — hear  me  1  It  is  not  because  T  am 
ungrateful,  not  because  I  do  not  love  you  and  grand'mere 
with  all  my  soul;  but,  indeed,  I  must  be  something  greal 
somehow.  If  it  be  only  charity  here,  I  will  nut  stay.  I 
know  I  was  born  an  aristocrat  like  themselves.  I  will 
not  remain  for  their  alms,  however  splendid  they  be.  Hut 
do  let  me  go  on  the  stage.  I  need  not  be  wicked,  as  that 
cruel  Coriolis  is.  I  will  obey  all  yon  wish;  I  will  do  ;ill 
you  say  ;  but  there  I  could  conquer  the  world, — or  what 
is  the  use  of  the  beauty  you  all  tell  me  1  have?  It  is  not 
because  I  am  heartless,  not  because  1  do  not  feel  all  thai 
you  ami  grand'mere  have  done  for  me  ;  but  1  know  thai 

if  I  »'0  back  to  be  shut  up,  all  the  long  winter  through,  ill 
our  little  room  by  the  river,  1  shall  die  jusl  with  longing 
for  some  other  world,  like  the  Mexican  bird  thai  the 
sailor  sou  of  Sarazin  brOUghl  hi-  mother  from  oveT  the 
m;is  |» 

The  whole  pent-up  pa. --ion  of  the  girl's  heart  broke  oul 

in  the  vehement  words.      Under  the  lermrjhat  Bhe  WOtild 


270  TRICOTRIN, 

have  to  return  to  the  monotony  and  peasant  companion- 
ship of  her  home,  the  flood-gates  of  her  impetuous  de- 
sire were  unloosed ;  and  there  poured  out  before  him  the 
turbulent  stream  of  her  long-repressed  thoughts. 

Of  what  the  stage  was  in  reality  she  had  even  yet  little 
notion  ;  it  was  only  in  her  sight  a  means  whereby  women 
of  beauty  and  genius  soared  their  way  from  obscurity  and 
poverty  into  the  light  of  the  world's  adulation.  Every 
sentence  she  uttered  pierced  him  to  the  heart  with  the 
sharpness  of  steel;  but  she  knew  naught  of  that.  She 
knew  only  that  he  loved  her.  Why,  then,  should  he  deny 
her  this  one  yearning  of  her  nature — to  be  great? 

He  let  her  speak  on,  answering  her  nothing.  To 
answer  her  must  have  been  to  either  condemn  or  affright 
her ;  and  he  dreaded  lest  she  should  see  the  tempest  that 
raged  in  his  heart  of  grief,  and  despair,  and  desire. 

This  was  all  that  he  had  reared  her  for — to  hear  her 
speak  of  the  river-nest  that  had  sheltered  her  as  of  some 
prison-house,  and  beseech  his  permission  to  follow  the 
steps  of  the  vilest  women  of  Paris  ! 

But  of  what  he  suffered  there  was  no  trace  in  his  voice 
when,  at  length,  he  replied  to  her, 

"  I  have  told  you — I  would  rather  see  you  in  your 
grave  than  on  the  stage.  But  that  may  be  a  prejudice. 
You  are  right,  an  actress  may  be  as  noble  and  pure  a 
woman  as  any  other  of  her  sex,  but, — if  she  be,  she  is 
hissed  off  the  boards  !  I  see  well  that  your  heart  is  set 
on  some  far  different  life  than  any  I  can  give  you.  I 
will  think  awhile  on  all  you  have  said,  and  see  you  again. 
Meantime,  go  ;  and  if  you  can,  bid  your  host  come  to  me." 

She  paused  before  him,  wistfully. 

"  You  are  angered  against  me?" 

He  stooped  to  her,  and  there'  was  an  emotion  in  his 
voice  that  she  had  never  heard  before,  as  he  answered 
her. 

"  Child — if  with  years  you  grow  the  guiltiest  woman 
that  ever  shamed  her  sex,  /  shall  have  pardon  for  you. 
Can  you  not  even  dream  what  love  is?" 

She  looked  at  him  half  fearfully,  her  great  eyes  wide- 
opened  like  a  startled  stag's.  Of  such  a  tenderness  as 
this  she  had  no  conception ;  yet  it  stirred  her  to  a  vague 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRA  )'.         271 

terror  and  an  intense  souse  of  worthlessness  and  weak- 
ness beneath  the  divine  greatness  of  such  a  gift. 

With  a  sudden  wild  awakening  to  its  strength  and  her 
own  blindness,  she  stretched  her  hands  out  to  him  with 
a  broken  cry. 

"Ah  !  Who  will  ever  care  for  me  like  thai  again  ?" 

For  this  one  instant  the  supreme  value  of  this  priceless 
benediction  outweighed  with  her  all  lower  and  baser 
things.  She  saw,  in  that  one  moment,  that  never,  so 
long  as  her  life  should  last,  would  such  a  love  as  this  be 
hers  again. 

A  delirious  hope  flashed  on  him.  He  caught  her  hands 
against  his  breast,  and  held  them  there  with  convulsive 
force. 

"  Would  that  love  suffice  to  you,  Viva?  If  you  wan- 
dered witli  me  -always — were  never  severed  from  me — 
would  you  sigh  then  for  the  golden  gifts  of  the  rich,  or 
the  triumphs  of  Coriolis?" 

His  eyes  fastened  on  her  face  with  feverish  longing, 
with  thirsty  dread  and  desire  mingled,  to  read  hi-  answer 
there.  She  hesitated  a  moment,  looking  up  at  him  with 
innocent  wonder,  knowing  no  meaning  in  his  question 
save  that  she  should  go  whithersoever  he  went  in  his 
wanderings,  as,  when  a  child,  she  had  so  often  begged 
to  do. 

"  1  do  not  know,''  she  said,  tenderly,  and  with  a  tremor 
in  the  answer,  for  she  loved  him  in  return  very  fondly, 
though  with  a  hive,  to  him,  well-nigh  more  cruel  than 
her  hate  would  have  been.  "  1  am  always  so  happy  when 
I  am  with  you;  only — only — it  is  to  lie  great,  too,  that 
I  want  !" 

He  dropped  her  hands,  and  turned  away.  The  hope 
of  a  moment's  span  was  gone. 

"Send  your  host  to  me,"  he  said,  briefly. 

She  went  as  he  bade  her  slowlj .  musingly,  with  a  cer- 
tain (error  and  yague  sense  of  loss  and  of  remorse  upon 
her.     She  forgol    the  errand  on  which  lie  had  -cut  her; 

lint    went    almosl     mechanically   to    her    own    r< i.    and 

curled  herself  among  its  velvet  cushions,  and  buried  her 
face  among  its  hot-house  flowers,  ami  cried  as  if  her  heart 
would  break — why  she  could  scarce  have  told. 


272  TRICOTRIN, 

She  had  said  the  truth  sincerely,  yet  she  felt  that  she 
had  been  heartless  and  ungrateful ;  she  felt  too,  though 
indefinitely,  that  in  the  answer  she  had  given,  she  had  in 
some  way  or  another  divorced  her  life  from  that  of  the 
one  she  loved  best.  Best,  although  it  was  the  thought- 
less and  half-cruel  child's  love  that  she  rendered  him; 
best,  although  the  riches  and  glamour  of  the  world  were 
before  him  in  her  sight. 

In  her  solitude  she  thought  more  sadly  and  more 
gravely  of  him.  To  go  with  him  in  his  wanderings  as 
she  had  used  to  pray  to  do, — she  wondered  how  it  would 
be  with  her  if  she  did  so  ?  She  remembered  many  happy 
hours  spent  with  him  in  careless  freedom  ;  among  the 
yellow  wheat  or  the  ripened  vines ;  drifting  down  the 
river  in  some  great  cumbrous  boat,  that  was  yet  so  darkly 
picturesque,  with  its  heavy  tawny  sails  and  loads  of  corn 
or  fruit ;  or  sitting  under  the  broad-leaved  chestnut-trees 
before  some  farm-house  door,  listening  while  the  delicate 
delicious  music  of  the  Straduarius  echoed  through  the 
evening  air,  and  made  the  very  watch-dog  lift  his  head 
to  listen.  She  remembered  so  many  of  those  joyous  sea- 
sons— life  made  up  of  them  would  surely  be  fair  to  the 
sight  and  the  senses  ? 

And  then  with  him  she  knew  her  better  nature  reigned 
as  it  never  did  in  his  absence :  she  was  purer,  simpler, 
braver,  nobler,  beneath  his  influence  than  under  any  other. 
She  knew  as  well  as  he  that  in  this  life  that  she  now  led 
she  had  deteriorated.  She  knew  that  for  sake  of  every 
better  and  higher  thing  in  her  she  should  cast  off  all  these 
desires  for  a  fate  he  could  not  give  her,  and  surrender 
herself  in  innocence  and  contentment  to  the  safety  and 
simplicity  of  her  old  life  beneath  his  will.  He  had  been 
to  her  in  the  stead  of  country,  parentage,  home,  and 
brethren  :  he,  he  alone,  as  far  as  her  memory  could  reach, 
had  bestowed  on  her  everything  she  had  received,  from 
the  very  bread  that  had  appeased  her  daily  hunger.  And 
all  the  reward  that  she  had  given  him  had  been  to  pine 
for  an  alien  greatness,  and  to  refuse  to  follow  him  through 
the  years  to  come  !  She  was  hateful  in  her  own  sight ; 
hateful  and  full  of  guilt.     Her  heart  went  out  to  him  in 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRA  >.         273 

childlike  contrition  and  longing  tenderness ;  bul  her  pride 
and  the  lusts  of  her  vanity  drew  her  from  him. 

To  wander  with  him  always — -what  would  it  be  but  to 
be  always  among  the  people?  True,  they  loved  and 
honored  him,  and  his  step  brought  gladness  and  mirth  at 
his  coining,  as  the  foot  of  the  wine-god  sowed  thyme  and 
flowers  wherever  it  fell.    . 

But  it  was  ever  among  the  homes  of  the  poor  that  he 
dwelt,  in  their  fields  that  he  labored,  in  their  festivities 
that  he  shared.  He  laughed  to  scorn  the  palaces  of  the 
rich,  and  would  never  break  bread  beneath  a  great  man's 
roof.  The  dome  under  which  he  worshiped  was  the  blue 
of  the  starlit  sky;  and  the  ears  for  which  his  melodies 
were  breathed  were  the  ears  that  through  long  labor  had 
only  heard  the  moving  of  scythes,  or  the  beating  of  oars, 
or  the  whirling  of  steam-wheels,  and  had  been  deadened 
and  deaf  to  the  sweet  sermons  of  music.  To  be  with 
him  was  to  be  "of  the  people"  forever;  forever  to  be 
banished  from  the  triumphs  of  greatness,  from  the  lux- 
uries of  wealth. 

And  though  the  graciousness  of  love,  and  courage, 
and  poetry,  and  charity,  and  tolerance,  and  peace,  would 
be  with  her  in  the  life,  she  still  recoiled  from  it  because 
it  would  be  without  the  dreamy  splendors  and  sensual- 
ities of  riches,  and  without  brilliancy  in  the  sighl  of  men 
to  whom  she  would  still  be  but  a  Waif  and  Stray. 

"I  must  be  great!"  she  murmured,  vehemently,  "I 
am  sure  1  came  from  greatness!" 

She  could  not  doubt  it,  as  she  raised  her  head  and 
looked  at  her  face  in  the  mirror  opposite;  there  were 
patrician  pride  and  patrician  blood  in  every  line  and  hue 
of  it,  flushed  though  its  hot  cheeks  were,  and  tear-laden 
its  brimming  eyes. 

She  fell  herself  the  offspring  of  -"me  mighty  race,  and 
destined  to  some  mighty  sovereignty  :  should  she  be  false 
to  these?  No! — rather  musl  she  be  false  where  every 
common  bund  <>l  gratitude  claimed  fealty. 


274  TR1C0TRIN, 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

Tricotrin  remained  long  where  she  had  left  him,  his 
arms  resting  on  a  marble  shelf  beside  him,  and  his  head 
bent  down  on  them. 

The  torture  of  doubt  was  ended ;  there  remained  in  its 
stead  the  dullness  of  despair. 

The  bird  chose  to  spread  its  wings  toward  the  glisten- 
ing golden  roofs  of  kings'  palaces; — let  her  go!  If  she 
came  not  of  her  own  will  to  find  her  repose  and  safety 
in  his  bosom,  not  by  lure  nor  by  prayer  would  he  recall 
her. 

Nevertheless,  the  corpse  of  a  dead  hope  lay  heavy  on 
him,  and  its  coldness  chilled  to  ice  the  strong  and  vivid 
blood  within  him. 

Yet  not  now,  even  in  his  own  heart,  did  he  reproach 
her.  It  had  been  his  own  folly,  he  deemed,  to  think  that 
the  free,  wandering,  homeless  life  of  a  man  who  was  poor 
could  suffice  to  the  fancy  and  needs  of  a  fair  woman-child. 
Yet  not  once  did  he  wish  he  were  rich  or  were  great, — 
the  love  that  would  not  cling  to  him  because  he  could  not 
strew  its  path  with  roses,  and  fill  its  hands  with  gold, 
was  love  worse  than  indifference  in  his  eyes.  Indiffer- 
ence might  have  been  cold,  but  love  such  as  this  was 
cowardly. 

An  hour  passed,  unwittingly  to  him ;  then  the  door 
once  more  unclosed  and  his  host  entered.  Tricotrin 
started  and  raised  himself  erect;  in  the  dusky  ruddy 
light  of  the  declining  day  the  agitation  on  his  face  was 
veiled. 

"I  only  this  moment  learned  that  Yiva  had  left  you," 
said  the  Duke  de  Lira.  "  It  seems  she  forgot  your  bid- 
ding until  now.     You  find  her " 

He  paused ;  hesitating  how  to  put  the  question  that 
was  on  his  lips. 

Tricotrin  filled  up  the  blank. 


THE  STORY  OF  A     WAIF  A. YD    STRAY.  275 

"Changed? — or  well?  Which  would  you  ask?  I  find 
her — as  I  thought  to  find  her — ruined  for  the  life  with 
which  she  had  been  hitherto  content,  and  ready  to  hurl 
herself  to  any  depths  from  which  it  should  be  promised 
her  she  would  rise  enriched  and  greal  !  5fou  have  done 
what  I  foresaw  would  be  done:  I  do  not  blame  you. 
You  have  only  brought  out,  under  hot-house  heat,  the 
native  evil  that  always  sleeps  in  such  fair  frail  things  as 
she.  You  have  thought  to  do  well  by  her,  doubtle 
but  how  is  it  well  to  make  a  creature,  half  infant  and 
half  woman,  loathe  all  that  is  honestly  hers,  and  crave  all 
that  can  never  be  hers  except  with  dishonor? — how  is  it 
well,  to  make  the  pure  bread  of  life  taste  coarse  and  ab- 
horrent to  her,  and  only  the  honeyed  gilded  confections 
that  poison  and  cloy  become  the  sole  food  she  will  feed 

01)   with  appetite  ?" 

He  spoke  with  the  swift  eloquence  that  was  always 
natural  to  him  under  emotion;  what  arrests  the  speech 
on  mosl  men's  lips  brought  it,  burning  and  rapid  as  fire, 
to  his.  His  hearer  listened  without  anger,  though  it  was 
a  bohemian  who  relinked  him  for  what  the  world  would 
have  called  a  generous  and  most  marvelous  charity. 

"You  do  us  some  wrong,  1  think,"  he  said,  patiently. 
"Here,  the  tastes  thai  were  inherent  in  her  have  de- 
veloped; that  is  all.  Is  it  not  better  they  should  do  so, 
while  yet  her  future  is  undecided  and  malleable,  than 
that  they  should  be  discovered  by  herself  and  l>v  others 
too  late?" 

"Too  late  1"  echoed  Tricotrin,  with  unconscious  vio- 
lence. "  It  is  always  too  late  for  a  child  to  discover  that 
she  is  made  for  riches,  and  rank,  and  honor,  when  she  is 
motherless,  fatherless,  nameless,  and  penniless!  What 
avail  is  it  ever  for  such  an  one  to  discover  thai  she  pines 
for  a  palace,  and  has  the  graces  thai  empresses  have  ool  ? 
What  avail  ever,  except  to  lure  her  out  ward  to  >he  road 
where  vice  dresses  itself  as  splendor,  and  disgrace  I  hrones 
itself  as  a  sovereign,  and  the  woman  who  counts  the 
mosl  honors  is  the  woman  who  counts  the  most  -  '  I 
see  no  end  that  is  served,  except  such  an  end  as  this,  by 
her  learning  thai  Bhe  passionately  craves  whal  is  not  hers 
by  birth  or  by  title,  and  can  never  be  hers  by  purchase 
unless  she  barter  her  beauty  for  it  !' 


276  TRICOTRIN, 

"You  forget  our  covenant, "  interrupted  the  Duke  de 
Lira,  still  gently,  for  he  interpreted  aright  the  despair 
and  the  dread  which  inspired  words  in  themselves  so 
pregnant  of  offense  for  him,  had  he  so  chosen  to  read 
them.  "You  cannot  think  us  such  barbarians  that  we 
can  forsake  this  lovely  child  when  once  she  has  been 
under  our  roof?  I  gave  you  my  word  to  provide  in  such 
measure  as  I  could  for  her  happiness.  It  is  I  who  am 
her  debtor  for  having  brought  so  much  of  youth,  of  glad- 
ness, and  of  freshness  into  my  own  somber  existence." 

Tricotrin  flashed  a  searching  burning  glance  upon  him  : 
he  said  nothing,  but  in  that  glance  he  read  the  other's 
heart  like  a  book, — his  suspicions  were  confirmed. 

"My  mother  has  grown  to  attach  herself  to  Viva,"  the 
nobleman  pursued.  "  She  would  part  from  her  with  re- 
gret ;  of  the  girl's  own  contentment  you  can  judge  for 
yourself.     This  life  suits  her  well — let  her  lead  it." 

"How?"  —  his  teeth  were  set  hard  as  he  put  the 
question. 

"As  she  does  now.  I  have  no — absolutely  no— kin- 
dred. I  can  do  as  it  pleases  me  with  my  wealth  without 
wronging  any.  I  will  guarantee  to  her  such  a  fortune  as 
shall  raise  her  above  all  possible  neglect  or  need.  For  a 
year  or  more  she  can  spend  her  time  in  such  studies  as 
are  pleasures  to  her ;  then  when  she  is  some  few  years 
older  she  shall  enter  the  "great  world"  that  she  longs  for, 
in  such  fashion  as  shall  show  to  her  only  its  brightest 
side.  I  know  that  for  her  to  do  this  is  for  you  to  surren- 
der all  the  claims  on  her  which  you  justly  hold  as  her 
sole  friend  and  protector  ;  but  it  is  for  her  own  happiness, 
which,  I  think,  can  ill  be  made  in  any  other  way.  If  I 
wound  you  by  what  I  say  you  must  remember  that  in 
saying  it  I  only  keep  my  word." 

"I  thank  you;  you  are  very  generous." 

That  was  all  he  answered  as  he  turned  and  paced  to 
and  fro  the  length  of  the  chamber.  He  knew  that  the 
words  addressed  to  him  were  spoken  in  honor  and  liber- 
ality ;  the  acknowledgment  of  them  was  wrung  from  his 
justice;  yet  he  could  have  leapt  on  the  man  that  uttered 
them  and  have  strangled  him,  as  wild  beasts  do  their  foes. 

"  You  will  prefer  the  assurance  of  her  future  from  a 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         277 

woman  than  from  a  man,"  pursued  the  other;  his  sympa- 
thies were  too  true  to  let  him  misconstrue  as  offense  to  him- 
self the  pain  that  he  knew  his  words  caused.  "  My  mot  her 
will  say  to  you  all  that  I  say;  in  her  name,  not  in  mine, 
if  you  deem  it  better,  can  the  conveyance  of  such  wealth 
as  we  may  decide  on  be  made  over  to  Viva.  She  has  at- 
tached herself  to  the  child:  it  will  lend  a  charm  to  her 
last  years  to  see  so  graceful  a  creature  about  her  in  all 
the  brilliance  of  youth.  What  more  can  I  add?  Any 
pledge,  any  security,  any  bond  you  may  wish  I  will  give, 
and  that  life  will  go  well  with  her  I  cannot  doubt.  She 
is  not  one  of  those  formed  to  suffer;  under  calamity,  or 
poverty,  or  shame,  she  might  kill  herself  like  enough,  but 
exist  in  pain  or  want  she  would  never." 

"That  is  true," — he  paced  still  to  and  fro  the  chamber, 
his  head  sunk  down  on  his  chest.  Pie  knew  that  it  was 
true ;  that  this  child  whom  he  had  rescued  from  the  drear- 
iness of  death  by  hunger,  thirst,  and  the  chills  of  the 
niui\t,  was  of  that  temperament  to  which  existence  musl 
be  sweet,  rich,  uncheckered,  or  else, — is  cast  off  by  rash 
passion  in  the  first  hour  of  desolation. 

He  knew  that  with  himself  happiness  could  not  come 
to  her,  since  in  her  sighl  that  magic  gifl  could  only  be 
summoned  by  ;i  wand  of  gold.  She  desired  these  things 
which  now  were  offered  to  her:  though  the  effort  were 
to  kill  him  he  would  not  seek  to  hold  her  through  her 
gratitude,  nor  permit  pity  to  approach  him  from  those 
whom  she  selected  in  his  stead.  His  pride  arose  to  re- 
press the  evidence  of  pain  before  the  man  to  whom  her 
allegiance  would  henceforth  be  given,  by  choice  and  pref- 
erence. 

He  came  and  stood  before  her  host,  grave,  calm,  with 
a  haughty  and  patient  composure,  beneath  which  all  pas- 
sion and  all  pain  were  alike  held  down  in  silence. 

"You  make  a  greal  offer;  a  generous  offer,"  be  said 
briefly.  "  Prom  you,  moreover,  it  is  dictated  by  no  de- 
sign of  a  libertine,  no  desire  of  a  voluptuary.  1  compre- 
hend your  intention,  and  I  honor  it-  charity.  It-  accep- 
tation or  its  refusal  lies  with  her  whom  it  concerns;  nol 
with  me.  It  were  idle  to  affecl  to  doubl  which  it  will 
receive.     Were  she  my  daughter  1  should  refuse,  in  her 

24 


218  TRICOTRIN, 

name,  a  liberality  which,  however  nobly  tendered,  must 
still  be  an  alms.  But,  having  no  sort  of  title  to  her  life, 
I  can  have  no  justification  in  forcing  her  away  from  your 
charity,  which  can  bestow  on  her  the  magnificence  she 
covets,  to  retain  her  under  mine,  which  can  scarcely  at 
its  best  lift  her  above  poverty.  Let  your  mother  state 
to  her  to-night  what  you  have  stated  to  me  ;  let  her,  then, 
weighing  well  the  two,  choose  betwixt  you  and  me.  A 
thing  of  so  much  moment  should  not  be  hastily  adopted 
or  rejected.  I  foresee  many  objections  to  your  plan: 
many  reasons  why  much  trouble  may  come  to  you  through 
it;  we  do  not  know  whence  she  comes,  nor  who  may 
some  day  claim  her.  But  this  is  for  your  judgment;  not 
for  mine." 

The  Duke  de  Lira  answered  nothing.  He  stood,  look- 
ing earnestly  and  with  a  curious  wonder  on  the  man  who 
thus  addressed  him  with  all  the  tone  of  one  gentleman  to 
another,  though  speaking  of  poverty  and  clad  in  the  guise 
of  a  laborer.  With  a  sudden  impulse  he  spoke  aloud  the 
perplexity  that  had  baffled  him  from  the  hour  when  he 
had  first  seen  the  revolutionist,  with  the  hymn  of  the  Mar- 
seillaise in  his  lips,  and  the  red  flag  above  his  head,  drive 
back  the  plunderers  from  out  his  court  of  honor. 

"  Tricotrin  !  ivhat  are  you  ?  Forgive  me  the  insolence, 
if  insolent  it  be,  for  sake  of  the  friendship  I  would  bear 
you  if  }rou  let  me.  A  bohemian,  a  genius,  a  scholar, 
a  democrat,  a  wanderer,  a  man  who  might  be  everything, 
and  who  chooses  to  be  nothing.  What  can  one  make  of 
you?" 

Tricotrin's  fine  delicate  lips  laughed  slightly. 

"  Sir — the  people  do  not  share  your  perplexity.  I 
would  make  myself  intelligible  to  your  Order,  if  I  cared 
for  their  comprehension.  I  am  no  mystery  that  I  know 
of;  save  that  truly  a  man  who  does  not  care  for  greed  or 
for  gain  is  an  anomaly  in  this  day !  But  I  do  not  care  to 
speak  of  myself.  I  thank  you  for  your  offer  of  friendship ; 
but  I  make  no  friendships.  And  from  your  order  to  mine 
they  would  savor  too  much  of  patronage  for  my  taste. 
Let  us  rather  conclude  the  matter  which  alone  unites  us, 
— for  a  season.  You  desire  absolutely  to  adopt  Viva  into 
your  family  and  your  station  ?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRA  V.         219 

"I  do  so." 

"You  remember  that  contingencies  may  arise  that  I 
cannot  avert?  No  one  knows  whence  she  came,  uor  by 
whom  she  was  born  or  begotten;  there  is  the  possibility 
at  any  time  of  claimants  arising;  specially  so  when  she 
is  of  prominence  in  the  world." 

"That  we  must  hazard.  I  think  that  there  is  little.  I 
have  hadfresb  inquiries  instituted  whence  you  discovered 
her  ;  but  there  appearsno  clew  whatever  to  her  parentage 
or  her  abandonment.  And  the  crime  of  such  abandon- 
ment will  keep  silent  its  perpetrators.  Moreover, — who 
has  seen  her  in  that  little  chalet  by  the  Loire?  A  few 
peasants  only.  There  are  indeed  Coriolis  and  her  youn«' 
lover,  but  we  can  guard  her  from  their  sight  until  such 
time  as,  with  her  womanhood,  she  shall  have  so  changed 
that  they  would  never  dream  of  her  identity.  tJnless 
you  choose  to  reveal  it,  none  need  recognize  her  in  the 
new  life  she  w  ill  lead." 

"I  shall  not  do  so.  At  the  same  time  let  it  be  under- 
stood that  I  cannot  guard  you  or  her  from  such  possibili- 
ties.  And  I  deem  them  more  perilous  than  yon  do. 
Women  like  ( loriolis  never  forgel  aughl — save  their  God. 
Nor  on  the  other  hand  will  I  surrender  my  righl  to  have 
fret.'  access  to  her  whenever  1  may  deem  lit.  Accountfor 
my  connection  with  her  as  you  please:  bul  1  will  not  lie 
debarred  from  some  watch  over  her  life." 

"Heaven  forbid  you  should  he.     Jf  she  ever  forgel 

what  she  owe  to  you " 

"  She  will  forget  it.  [t  is  not  remembrance  of  thai  kind 
that  1  need.  But  1  desire  to  have,  always,  the  power  to 
judge  for  myself  of  how  far  from,  or  how  near  to,  happi- 
ness she  be.  You  may  trust  me  to  exercise  the  power  in 
such  wise  as  will  lie  lies)  for  her.  As  regards  wealth. — 
it  would  not  he  just,  that  takiug  her  to  a  glittering  life, 
she  should  be  abandoned  to  the  chance-  of  caprice;  or 
left  to  poverty  if  your  mother  die.  Therefore,  lei  the 
Duchess  de  Lira  settle  on  her  such  sum  as  she  shall  d< 
just,  if  Viva  decide — ami  there  can  in'  no  question  hut 
she  will  so  decide — on  acceptance  of  your  offer.  Let  her 
ponder  well,  understand  fully,  whal  it  is  she  does  \ 
she  selects,  then  so  he  her  future.      If   I  do  not   thank  you 


a 


280  TRICOTRIN, 

as  you  may  deem  you  deserve,  believe  that  I  do  not  the 
less  appreciate  the  gentleness  and  benevolence  which 
move  you.  I  leave  you  to  acquaint  her  yourself  of  your 
will  with  her.  You  can  then  propose  to  her  all  that  you 
desire,  and  see  if  she  accept  your  guardianship:  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  she  will  do  so." 

As  he  turned  to  move  away,  his  host  stretched  out  his 
hand  to  arrest  him. 

"  Stay !  Tricotrin,  if  it  give  you  pain,  if  it  cause  you 
regret,  to  part  with  her  to  our  keeping,  I  do  but  ill  repay 
the  debt  I  owe  to  you  ?" 

"  You  owe  me  none.  I  forced  my  people  from  plunder 
and  incendiarism :  think  you  I  should  have  done  other- 
wise if  they  had  attacked  the  house  of  my  enemy?" 

"No  matter,  I  do  not  hold  what  you  did  so  lightly. 
Well  as  they  loved  you  they  were  nigh  turning  on 
you  for  thwarting  them,  like  tigers  balked  of  their  spoil. 
And  if  to  lose  the  child  you  have  cherished  cause  you  one 
pang  of  regret " 

Tricotrin  stopped  the  phrase  on  his  lips  with  a  smile 
that  had  an  irony  more  mournful  than  tears. 

"Pshaw!  Is  there  aught  that  we  love  that  does  not 
stab  us,  somewise,  soon  or  late?  There  is  no  serpent 
without,  that  can  sting  half  so  hard  as  the  tenderness 
in  us!" 

Then,  his  pride  forbidding  him  even  so  much  as  these 
words  of  reproach  and  lament,  he  laughed  as  he  passed 
to  the  door. 

"I  am  a  wanderer,  and  have  no  ties  to  be  ruptured. 
You  solve  a  problem  that  began  to  grow  knotted  and 
vexatious  in  my  hands.  I  should  thank  you  more  than 
I  have  done.  Without  you  Viva  would  most  likely  have 
passed  to  the  path  of  Coriolis.  Her  rescue  is  my  obli- 
gation.    Adieu ! " 

He  was  gone  as  the  farewell  was  spoken:  in  his  hand 
was  the  injured  Arlecchino.  Even  a  trifle  that  pleasured 
her  had  worth  in  his  eyes;  and  a  promise  concerning  a  toy 
had  its  bond  on  him,  even  though  the  toy  were  his  rival. 

As  he  passed  an  open  door,  a  soft,  silvery,  luminous 
thing  sprang  through  it  toward  him ;  it  was  the  form  of 
Viva,  in  the  airy  grace  of  her  evening  appareling. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WATF  AND   STRA  V.         2«1 

"You  are  not  going?"  she  whispered.  "Madame  re- 
ceives to-night,  and  they  have  dressed  me  early — I  want 
you  to  look  at  me  I" 

His  breath  came  and  went,  swift  and  hard.  While  his 
heart  was  breaking  over  her,  this  frivolous  thing  only 
heeded  the  sweep  of  laces  and  the  shimmer  of  silksl 

"You  were  fairer  in  your  vine  garland,"  he  said  briefly. 

She  gave  a  sigh  of  impatience. 

"Oh!  how  can  you  say  so?  Just  look  at  me,  I  am  all 
snow  and  silver,  like  a  fairy." 

And  she  shook  herself,  and  whirled  round  lightly,  that 
the  gossamer  tissues  might  gleam  in  the  light  and  float 
on  the  air.  A  strange  dreamy  memory  of  the  German 
Willis  of  legend,  who  dances  in  the  midsummer  moon- 
light, and  with  whom  whosoever  dance  also  must  perish 
ere  dawn,  came  to  him  in  the  moment,  as  such  weird  fan- 
cies will  come  to  minds  of  the;  strongest. 

"Nature  has  given  you  beauty.  Take  heed  how  you 
use  it,"  he  said  wearily.  "But  you  are  too  young  for 
these  pleasures,  Viva." 

"Oh!  They  only  let  me  go  for  one  hour,  just  to  see 
and  he  seen,"  she  murmured,  with  the  tears  .-till  wel  on 
her  flushed  cheeks.  "And  it  is  so  beautiful  there!  and 
the  great  ladies  caress  me,  though  I  think  that  they  hate 
me  in  their  heart,-!  and  the  greal  nobles  tell  me  they 
never  saw  anything  half  so  lovely  as  I  am.  And  I  think 
it  is  true  when  I  look  in  the  mirrors:  there  is  no  one 
like  me  !" 

The  confession  was  .-.>  naive  ;  the  vanity,  as  yet  so  inno- 
cent ;  even  in  that  hour  he  could  not  choose  bul  .-mile  at 
them,  though  the  smile  was  very  mournful. 

"From  the  world  they  prepare  you  Wn\  and  the  world 
of  Coriolis  there  is  little  difference,  save  a  glazing  of  lip 

honor!      Bui — what    can    they  call    you    in    this    bouse   to 
their  guests?" 

"Only  Viva:  there  is  mystery  kept  up aboul  me.  It  is 
thought  that  I  am  the  grandchild  of  a  ile.nl  friend  of 
madame's,  whom  she  has  discovered  in  an  obscure  posi- 
tion. Nothing  definite  is  told.  Madame  like-  t,,  have  it 
all  shadowy  ami  vague,  and  to  excite  people's  interesl 
without  conceding  anything  to  their  curiosity." 

_•  f 


282  TRICOTRIN, 

"So!  You  take  kindly  already  to  thejies  of  the  great 
world?" 

Viva  colored:  the  dauntless  haughty  nature  of  the 
child  was  instinctively  aud  inherently  truthful,  and  he 
had  trained  her  to  look  on  falsehood  as  the  disgrace  of 
the  coward. 

"I  do  not  say  anything,"  she  murmured.  "It  is  sup- 
posed so,  and  I  am  not  to  contradict  it.  Madame  tells  me 
that  it  would  never  do  to  allow  it  to  be  divined  that  I  am 
— a  foundling." 

The  last  abhorred  word  was  very  low;  it  could  not  be 
consoled  to  her  even  by  her  own  convictions  of  her  splen- 
did though  hidden  lineage,  which  she  never  doubted  would 
soon  or  late  blossom  out  into  some  magnificence  of  her- 
itage and  celebrity. 

"No !"  he  said,  with  a  grave  tenderness  in  his  tone  that 
moved  her  strangely.  "And  yet,  though  you  will  deem 
me  cruelly  harsh  to  say  so,  I  doubt  if  it  would  not  be 
better  for  your  future  if  that  one  memory  of  what  you 
were  could  be  kept  ever  before  you !  I  see  you  to-morrow 
— farewell." 

She  stood  irresolute  and  remorseful  as  he  passed  away; 
then,  a  strain  of  music  caught  her  ear,  and  she  turned  to 
a  mirror  near. 

"I  shall  have  no  beauty  if  I  cry!"  she  thought,  and 
she  choked  back  the  sobs  which  were  fast  rising  in  her 
throat  as  she  looked  at  her  own  reflection. 


CHAPTER    XXVII. 

"She  has  accepted.  It  is  quite  natural  she  should 
have  done  so." 

He  spoke  quietly,  with  a  grave  courtesy,  where  he 
stood  on  the  morrow  in  the  chamber  of  the  Duchess  de 
Lira.  He  was  quick  to  conceal  all  emotion,  impassioned 
and  impulsive  though  his  nature  was;  and  he  came  before 
them  calm,  careless,  full  of  the  ready  wit  and  of  the  easy 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         283 

negligence  of  his  habitual  manner.     His  temper  made 

him  fling  off  pain;  and,  having  once  resolved  to  surrender 
ner  up  to  those  who  virtually  purchased  her  by  superior 
wealth,  he  was  none  the  less  resolved  to  conceal  from 
them  that  the  surrender  cost  him  aught.  The  intelligence 
that  she  had  thus  chosen  was  no  blow  to  him:  he  had 
not  dreamed  that  she  would  choose  otherwise.  All  thai 
she  desired  they  could  bestow ;  nothing  that  she  desired 
could  he  accord  her;  and  he  knew  well  how  the  affections 
of  such  feminine  Caprices  as  Viva  were  guided  by  their 
sunny  and  unconscious  egotism. 

The  old  aristocrat  studied  him  with  well-concealed 
wonder.  She  knew  of  the  debt  that  her  son  had  owed  bo 
him  in  the  times  of  the  revolution;  but  she  abhorred 
every  form  of  revolution,  and  had  imagined  him  a  coarse 
eccentric  man  of  the  people  who  could  be  dismissed  as 
soon  as  his  Waif  were  purchased  from  him,  as  easily  as 
the  husk  of  a  client  mil  is  thrown  away,  when  the  sweet 
snowy  kernel  is  extracted.  She  was  lost  in  the  same 
amazement  and  wrath  as  had  at  the  first  moved  her  at 
finding  in  t  he  bohemian  whom  she  had  thought  to  relieve 
by  taking  u  burden  from  his  hands,  a-  man  who  dictated 
terms  to  her,  and  made  the  presence  of  a  foundling  in 
her  house  as  grave  a  matter  as  the  betrothal  of  a  prim 
and  spoke  to  her  with  all  the  dignity  and  power  of  an 
equal,  while  he  fascinated  her  by  an  irresistible  charm 
she  could  neither  analyze  nor  dispute. 

Though  worldly-wise  and  haughty  to  coldness,  the 
aged  duchess  had  a  certain  gentleness  of  heart,  and  a 
great  generosity.  The  desire  of  her  beloved  and  only 
living  son  was  law  to  her ;  and  although  she  had  \  iewed 
at  first  with  aversion  and  disgust  his  attraction  toward 
a  nameless,  and  doubtless  bastard  child,  she  had  ended 
by  feeling  a  woman's  tenderness  for  the  child  herself; 
whose  native  grace,  pride,  and  refinement,  assimilated 
themselves  so  rapidly  to  her  own.  Her  son's  desire  had 
been  at  first  inexplicable  and  most  unwelcome  to  her: 
but  now,  there  had  come  into  her  thoughts  ;i  vague  c 
ception  which  she  did  uol   like  to  brood  upoq  which 

asibly  served   to   reconcile   her  to  In-  wi  the 

threatened  extinction  of  hi-  race  was  a  greal  misery  to 


2S4  TRTCOTRTN, 

her,  her  craving  for  its  perpetuation  still  stronger  than 
her  pride  ;  as  it  seemed  he  could  never  be  wooed  by  those 
of  his  own  rank, — since  the  days  of  his  earliest  youtn 
when  a  cruel  treachery  had  taught  him  his  alienation 
from  their  sex, — would  it  not  be  better  that  he  should 
wed  even  with  a  peasant  than  leave  his  name  to  perish  ? 
If  this  were  ever  to  be  so,  the  preparation  and  com- 
mencement for  it  must  be,  she  resolved,  the  absolute  and 
unalterable  banishment  of  all  things  connected  with  the 
girl's  past  life.  Therefore  her  chagrin  and  her  wrath 
were  great,  when  in  the  man  whom  she  projected  to  dis- 
miss forever,  she  encountered  as  proud  a  spirit,  and  as 
resolute  a  will  as  her  own,  one  who  scarcely  thanked  her 
for  her  splendid  offer,  and  who  dictated  conditions  as 
though  he,  not  she,  were  the  patron  and  the  donor. 

At  his  last  stipulation,  she,  had  it  not  been  for  her  son, 
would  have  bade  him  take  back  his  foundling  and  make 
a  servant,  a  gipsy,  an  actress  of  her,  what  he  would  : 
yet  the  last  stipulation  which  offended  her  so  deeply  was 
but  this  : 

"  I  have  only  one  thing  more  to  add,"  said  Tricotrin, 
when  their  interview  drew  nigh  its  end.  "  It  is  to  stipu- 
late that  I,  myself,  shall  never  be  denied  access  to  her. 
You  can  account  for  my  knowledge  of  her  as  seems  best 
to  you.  I  have  spoken  my  desire  that  she  should  never 
be  painfully  reminded  of  her  past,  or  led  to  feel  that  she 
is  deemed  of  an  inferior  class  to  that  in  which  she  will 
henceforth  move ;  you  may  be  certain  therefore  that  my 
presence  will  never  be  forced  on  her,  unadvisedly  or  in- 
opportunely. But  I  will  not  surrender  the  right  to  judge 
for  myself  of  her  happiness  or  unhappiness.  I  will  not 
relinquish  the  power  of  ascertaining  the  truth  concerning 
her  welfare.  I  will  not  consent  to  become  as  a  stranger 
to  her." 

"  It  is  impossible,"  commenced  Madame  de  Lira;  but 
her  son,  standing  beside  her  chair,  laid  his  hand  on  hers : 

"  Nay,  madame,  it  is  but  just,"  he  said  quietly. 

"  It  is  hut  just,"  repeated  Tricotrin,  calmly,  "to  myself 
and  to  her.  All  that  I  know  of  her  history  you  know ; 
and  that  all  is  nothing.  But  I  have  taken,  of  my  own 
will,  the  maintenance  and  direction  of  her  life.     Having 


TIIE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         285 

once  assumed  those,  I  should  err  to  her  if  I  did  not  con- 
tinue to  hold,  at  least,  the  ability  to  know  how  life  goes 
with  her  in  her  future.  1  have  said,  and  I  repeal  it  if 
that  be  needful,  that  I  shall  exercise  the  right  with  all 
due  regard  to  her  position  or  your  prerogative;  but  the 
right  itself  I  shall  not  relinquish  She  will  see  me  very 
rarely,  very  rarely  indeed,  if  she  be  happy;  but  when- 
ever she  needs  me — if  ever  she  needs  me — I  shall  be 
there." 

"Surely  !"  interposed  the  duke,  still  with  that  gentle 
touch  of  his  hand  on  hers,  entreating-  silence  from  his 
mother.  "  Do  not  think  that  we  seek  to  teach  her  either 
ingratitude  or  oblivion." 

"There  will  be  no  need  to  teach  them.  Both  will 
come  self-sown !  Nay!  Do  not  think  I  say  this  either 
in  irony  or  blame.  She  is  human  ;  why  should  we  ex- 
pect her  to  be  above,  humanity?  I  thank  you  for  your 
kindness  toward  her.  I  see  in  it  a  beneficence  to  my- 
self. For  evil  would  have  touched  her  in  obscurity  and 
want  of  riches.  You  have  saved  her  from  the  chance — ■ 
the  certainty — that  in  the  only  lite  she  could  have  led 
through  me  she  would  one  day  have  cursed  me  that  1  ever 
came  between  her  ami  the  death  that  was  allotted  to  her 
in  her  infancy.  To  you,  madame,  I  need  say  nothing. 
You  are  a  woman, — 1  need  not,  remind  you  thai  she  is 
worse  than  motherless?  You  are  of  gentle  blood, — I 
need  not  bid  you  remember  that  a  scornful  word,  which 
is  a  jest  to  the  well-born,  can  sting  like  a  serpent  what  is 
desolate  and  dependent  ?  You  are  aged, —  I  need  not 
solicit  from  you  sympathy  and  patience  with  the  fanciful 
enthusiasms  and  way  ward  ways  of  youth  ?  The  gifl  of 
your  gold  will  be  the  generosity  thai  the  world  will 
appraise.  It  is  the  gifl  of  your  love  and  your  gentleness 
that  1  would  bespeak  for  Viva.      An  old  peasant-woman 

gave  them  ;  they  were  all  she  had  to  give.  Bui — Unless 
they  be  added  to  your  treasures  likewise,  the  child,  amid 
riches,  will  remain  poor  indeed.  I  will  hid  her  farewell 
now  ;    and  then — she  has  her  will,  she  is  yours."' 

His  voice  was  calm  and  unbroken  throughout  the  words, 
yet  there  was  an  accent  in  them  that  thrilled  through  the 
hearts  of  his  hearer.-;    and,  as  Bhe  heard,  dimmed  with  a 


286  TRICOTRIN, 

strange  unwonted  emotion,  the  keen  eyes  of  the  chill,  im- 
perious, disdainful  protectress  of  what  had  forever  aban- 
doned him. 

"  He  dictated  to  me/"  she  murmured,  as  he  quitted  the 
chamber,  moved  as  she  had  never  been  through  many 
years,  beneath  whose  ice  the  love  she  had  borne  her  son 
had  been  the  only  living  thing  of  warmth.  "And  you 
called  him  a  man  of  the  people,  my  son !" 

"  He  calls  himself  so " 

"  Of  the  people  ?  Of  the  mob  ?  Ridiculous  !  He  has 
the  voice  of  a  man  born  to  rule ;  he  has  the  grace  and 
the  negligence  of  courts.  What  is  there  of  the  populace 
about  him  ?" 

"  Nothing  save  his  sympathies.  They  are  wholly  with 
the  people." 

"Bah!  that  is  no  rule.  One  is  sometimes  tired  of  one's 
self — of  one's  order.  How  else  would  you  get  your 
Egalites,  your  Mirabeaux  ?  There  are  conservative  work- 
people ;  there  are  democrative  princes.  You  know  nothing 
else  of  him  ?" 

"Nothing.     No  one  knows  anything  of  Tricotrin." 

"Tricotrin!  Pshaw  1  Tricotrin!  Is  that  a  name?  It 
means  nothing  !"  answered  the  old  patrician,  with  impa- 
tience. "  That  man  has  borne  some  other  name ;  that 
man  must  have  been  noble  once  !" 

"  Why  so  ?  He  is  a  scholar,  an  artist,  a  genius,  but  a 
bohemian,  nevertheless,  to  the  core.  For  the  twenty 
years  and  more  that  I  have  heard  of  him  he  has  been  sim- 
ply what  he  is,  a  lawless  wanderer  of  the  '  ecole  buisson- 
niere. ' " 

Madame  de  Lira  shook  her  silvered  head. 

"No  matter!  He  must  have  race  in  him.  Heraldry 
mnylie;  but  voices  do  not.  Low  people  make  money, 
drive  in  state,  throng  to  palaces,  receive  kings  at  their 
tables  by  the  force  of  gold  ;  but  their  antecedents  always 
croak  out  in  their  voices.  They  either  screech  or  purr; 
they  have  no  clear  modulations.  Besides,  their  women 
always  stumble  over  their  train,  and  their  men  bow  worse 
than  their  servants.  But  this  man,  look  you, — he  has 
high  blood  in  his  veins,  however  he  come  by  it.  And — 
he  suffers  " 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  28 if 

Her  acute,  penetrative  acumen  had  pierced  to  the  truth, 
though  with  it  she  had  never  onee  seemed  to  have  a  pulse 
of  sympathy.  Her  son  paced  slowly  and  musingly  to 
and  fro  her  chamber,  with  an  anxious  shadow  on  his  face. 

"  I  hope  not,"  he  said,  with  a  pang  of  self-remorse.  "  I 
hope  to  heaven  not!     I  have  done  for  the  best " 

"Bah!"  murmured  the  duchess,  with  her  delicate 
irony.  "Do  not  use  those  words.  Nobody  ever  takes 
refuge  in  them  except  when  they  divine  they  have — done 
wrong.  Half  the  misery  of  this  world  is  made  by  per- 
sons 'doing  for  the  best,'  instead  of  leaving  others  alone 
to  do  just  as  they  choose  I  It  is  'best'  for  her,  of 
course — the  pretty,  heartless  thing  But  for  the  man, — 
it -is  a  little  bitter.  Your  silver  Harlequin  and  my  gold 
shoe-buckles  outweigh  him,  and  all  his  years  of  care,  with 
her  ;  it  is  a  little  bitter — that  I" 

"It  must  be  so — indeed!"  murmured  her  son  ;  and  for 
his  good  deed  he  felt  a  deeper  remorse  than  many  feel  for 
brutal  crimes. 

He  had  gone  to  her  where  she  had  stayed  during  the 
hour  of  their  converse,  in  a  dainty,  radiant,  little  room  that 
was  called  hers.  She  was  kneeling  byoneof  its  couches, 
with  her  head  bowed  down  upon  the  pile  of  cushions,  as 
he  entered.  She  had  chosen  as  her  desire  and  her  ambi- 
tion dictated,  chosen  as  her  vanity  entreated,  chosen  as 
the  evil  spirit  that  her  Prince  Faineanl  had  awakened  in 
her,  tempted  and  urged  her  to  do.  And  yet  there  were 
sorrow  and  shame  on  her;  she  fell  unworthy  in  her  own 
sight.  In  the  moment  of  her  triumph  she  fell  humili- 
ated; in  the  very  seizure  of  her  wishes  she  fell  disap- 
pointed. 

Though  vain  things  too  often  obscured  it,  the  core  of 
her  heart  was  pure  and  brave;  its  fibers  were  of  nobler 
stuff  than  the  egotisms  and  the  frivolities  that  Burrounded 
it.  There  were  dauntlessness  and  truth  enough  there 
still  to  make  her  know  that  she  had  acted  basely;  that 
the  humblesi  peasant-girl  working  in  the  vineyards  in 
summer  droughts  for  her  own  existence,  was  more  near  to 
trui'  dignity  and  freedom  than  was  sh<  ;  that  the  coar 
shepherd  or  swineherd,  keeping  hi-  herds  upon  the 
plains,  and  giving  of  his  poor  wage  to  the  parenl  or  the 


283  TRICOTRIN, 

benefactor  who  had  reared  hini,  was  nobler  and  more 
grateful  than  herself. 

Her  pride  told  her  that  she  should  refuse  all  alms  how- 
ever disguised  in  a  magnificent  liberality  ;  her  conscience 
told  her  that  she  should  reject  all  temptations,  however 
glittering  and  alluring,  which  would  banish  from  her  the 
lives  that  had  sheltered  and  succored  her  own.  She  was 
well  aware  that  she  was  won  by  the  purples  and  fine 
linens,  the  brilliancies  and  the  aggrandizements  of  the 
bribe  by  which  she  was  enthralled ;  and  she  was  worth- 
less in  her  own  eyes. 

For  the  second  time  in  her  life  she  shrank  from  the 
presence  of  the  only  living  creature  that  she  loved  ;  in  his 
gaze  she  felt  an  accusation  ;  in  his  voice  she  heard  the 
accents  of  a  judge.  Though  she  had  done  naught  against 
him  she  felt  as  though  she  had  betrayed  him;  she  had 
forsaken  him  ;  she  had  denied  him  ;  she  had  been  ashamed 
of  her  allegiance  to  him.  She  knew  that  she  had  sinned 
as  sinned  the  faithless  disciple  who  denied  his  master. 

The  bread  of  life,  and  the  food  of  the  spirit,  had  alike 
come  to  her  from  his  hand  and  from  his  voice ;  he  had 
bestowed  on  her  daily  bread  through  his  charity,  and  had 
raised  her  soul  toward  high  imperishable  things  by  his 
words.  She  owed  him  a  greater  debt  than  the  nourish- 
ment of  her  mortal  form  ;  she  owed  him  the  rescue  of  her 
mind  from  the  sloughs  of  ignorance  and  vice; — and  the 
way  that  she  paid  this  debt  was  to  desert  him  for 
the  bribes  of  wealth  !  Her  truer  nature  told  her  that, 
although  following  in  its  flight  the  gilded  arrow  of  ambi- 
tion, she  had  in  that  desertion  left  the  greatness  which 
was  pure  and  lofty  for  the  greatness  which  was  a  toy  of 
tinsel. 

To  be  true,  to  preserve  truth  unstained  at  any  cost,  had 
been  the  one  lesson  he  had  ever  taught  her;  and  she 
would  be  henceforth  a  lie — delicate,  sunlit,  harmless 
indeed,  but  still  a  lie  to  herself  and  the  world. 

When  the  vine  wreath  had  dropped,  crushed  and 
broken  on  the  floor,  Viva  would  have  given  the  world,  if 
she  had  owned  it,  to  bring  back  the  bloom  and  the  fresh- 
ness to  the  bright  crown  that  she  had  scorned  because  the 
people  had  woven  it,  and  a  great  man  had  seen  her  wear 


THE  STORY  OF  A     WAIF  ANT)   STRAY.         os<j 

it.  Her  old  child-life  that  she  had  despised  and  rebelled 
against  because  it  was  obscure  and  simple,  and  led  amid 
peasantry, — would  she  sigh  as  vainly  for  it,  sin:  won- 
dered," as  she  had  done  for  the  lost  grape  garland  ? 

Yet  she  cast  it  from  her  heedlessly  and  willingly. 

Until  the  vine  leaves  of  youth  are  faded,  who  knows 
their  value  or  sweetness?  None,  alas!  while  yet  the 
violet  clown  is  on  the  grapes,  while  yet  the  hair  that 
they  crown  is  unsilvercd  by  time. 

Some  vague  sense  of  the  bitter  fact  that  corrodes  all 
human  life — the  fact  that  desire  is  everything,  fruition  or 
possession  but  little — came  to  Viva,  in  the  granting  of 
her  wish,  as  it  comes  to  the  lover,  the  monarch,  the  bride, 
the  hero,  the  statesman,  the  poet,  all  alike,  when  that, 
which  they  have  sighed  for,  and  thirsted  for,  lies  feasted 
on  to  satiety  within  their  tired  grasp. 

Viva  had  gained  the  "  great  world  ;"  and  because  she 
had  gained  it  all  the  old  things  of  her  lost  past  grew  unal- 
terably sweet  to  her  now  that  they  no  longer  could  be 
hers.  The  brown,  kind,  homely,  tender  face  of  grand'- 
mere;  the  gambols  of  white  and  frolicsome  Bebee;  the 
woods  where,  with  every  spring,  she  had  filled  her  arms 
with  sheaves  (if  delicate  primroses;  the  quaint  little  room 
with  its  strings  of  melons  and  sweel  herbs;  its  glittering 
brass  and  pewter,  its  wood-lire  with  the  soup-put  simmer- 
ing above  the  (lame;  the  glad  free  days  in  the  vineyard, 
and  on  the  river,  with  the  winds  blowing  fragrance  from 
over  the  clover,  and  flax,  and  the  acacias  and  lindens  ; 
nay,  even  the  old,  quiet,  sleepy  hours  within  the  convent- 
walls,  lying  on  the  lush  unshaven  grass,  while  the  drow  -v 
bells  rang  to  vespers  or  compline ; — all  became  suddenly 
precious  and  dear  to  her  when  once  she  knew  that  they 
had  drifted  away  from  her  for  evermore. 

But  never  yet  so  dear  or  so  precious  that  they  made 
her  waver  in  her  choice.  The  young  wood-dove  Buttered 
her  white  wings  in  impatience  for  their  flight  from  the 
forest-covert  to  the  rose  aisles  of  kings'  gardens. 

And  he — thanked  God  that  he  had  found  Btrength, 
against  himself,  to  bid  her  go  where  heart,  and  fancy,  and 
desire  had  already  taken  flight,  as  he  beheld  her  on  thai 


290  TRICOTRIN, 

morning  in  which,  for  the  last  time,  he  was  with  her  as 
the  guide  and  guardian  of  her  life. 

She  had  been  robbed  from  him,  less  by  the  tempting 
of  others  than  by  the  discontent  of  her  own  soul.  It 
was  cruel  as  the  serpent's  tooth  to  relinquish  the  grace  of 
her  caressing  ways,  the  fairness  of  her  perfect  loveliness, 
the  watch  of  her  bright  and  wayward  intellect,  to  others. 

He  who  loved  Mankind,  but  who  had  long  had  no  spe- 
cial love  within  his  heart,  had  grown  in  the  last  few 
months  to  passionately  cherish  and  desire  her.  Yet  to 
hold  by  force,  what  he  could  not  gain  from  fidelity,  would 
have  been  an  egotism  and  a  baseness  impossible  to  him. 

"You  think  me  wicked!"  she  murmured,  as  he  stood 
beside  her.  "You  think  me  ungrateful — selfish — full  of 
greed?  I  told  you  the  other  night  that  I  would  not 
take  their  charity,  however  splendid  it  might  be — and  I 
have  taken  it.     I  have " 

"Hush!"  he  said,  gravely.  "Speak  of  it  no  more — 
never  more.  You  have  chosen — chosen  where  your  de- 
sire already  had  run  before  you.  You  have  not  known 
when  you  were  happy  ;  such  ignorance  is  ingratitude  to 
fate.  You  are  happy  now,  with  such  happiness  as  comes 
from  granted  wishes;  be  wise  enough  to  know  it." 

"Ah,  yes!"  she  said,  with  a  sudden  vibration  of  pas- 
sionate repentance  in  her  voice.  "I  have  my  wishes  ; 
but  I  feel  weak  and  guilty  in  the  joy  of  them.  Just  so 
I  longed  for  jewels  ;  but  when  that  young  prince  gave 
me  them,  although  I  loved  them,  I  never  felt  at  peace. 
And  it  is  just  so  now  !" 

"  Child, — what  title  have  you,  do  you  think,  to  escape 
the  doom  of  all  humanity  ?  You  desire — you  possess — 
and  you  find  repentance  and  satiety  already  lying,  in  wild 
justice,  at  the  core  of  the  thing  you  have  coveted.  You 
are  no  exception  ;  you  have  the  common  fate  of  all  mor- 
tality." 

"But  then  it  is  because  what  I  desired  was  wrong! 
When  I  wished  for  the  vine-feast,  when  I  wished  for  your 
coming,  when  I  wished  for  the  swallows'  return,  when  I 
wished  for  a  sail  on  the  water,  it  was  not  so ; — I  was  so 
happy  when  my  wishes  came " 

"  Because  your  desires  then  were  innocent.    Nay,  they 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         291 

are  now  no  guilt,  but  they  are  corroded,  they  arc  born  of 
envy  and  the  lusts  of  wealth;  and  their  advent  is  not 
peacet  because  your  conscience  is  in  unrest  at  their  pur- 
chase." 

"Because  I  know  myself  so  false  to  you!"  she  cried, 
in  that  breathless  terror  of  a  sudden  remorse.  "  Because, 
while  I  love  all  these  things  that  I  gain,  I  know  myself 
so  base,  so  unworthy,  so  unfaithful  to  you  who  have  been 
to  me  in  the  stead  of  father,  mother,  brethren,  friends, 
and  home!  Because  I  know  that  all  my  lifetime  spent 
in  service  and  fidelity  to  you  could  not  repay  you  all  the 
long  years  debt  I  owe  !  I  choose  the  life  they  offer  me, — 
I  cannot  help  but  choose  it,  it  draws  me  to  it  with  a  sor- 
cery. I  pine,  I  long,  I  thirst  to  be  in  greatness,  and  if  I 
had  refused  it  and  had  gone  hack  with  you,  the  evil  in 
me  would  have  made  me  vile,  the  longing  in  me  would 
have  made  me  restless,  the  discontent  in  me  would  have 
made  me  your  torture,  not  your  blessing!  1  cannot  help 
what  I  do.     Forgive  me  for  it  if  you  can  I" 

The  impetuosity,  broken  and  vehement,  of  the  words, 
but  ill  told  the  conflict  in  her  heart  ;  the  conflict  betwixt 
the  irresistible  delights  of  thai  new  world  which  tempted 
her.  and  the  remorseful  clinging  of  her  old  affections  to 

their  severed  ties.     He  heard  in  silence;  the  ti was 

past  when  it  could  give  him  either  hope  or  dread  ;  when 
it  could  move  him  to  expectation  or  disappointment. 

Thronirh  all  these  years  he  had  taken  thoughl  of  her, — 
the  young  forsaken  creature  for  whom  no  other  eared, — 
he  had  denied  himself  that  she  mighl  enjoy  ;  he  had  put 
down  the  wine-cup  untasted  thai  she  mighl  have  bread, 
oftentimes;  he  bad  broken  in  the  careless  laughter-loving 
indolence  of  his  temper  to  the  deliberate  acceptance  of 
labor,  that  the  trust  he  had  self-assumed  mighl  be  borne 

out  by  her  maintenance.     And  all  this  was  i nted  as 

naughl  ;  all  this  was  swept  aside  as  though  it  had  never 
been,  by  the  firsl  proffer  of  a  rich  man's  void  ! 

Bui  it  was  his  nature  to  give  lavishly  and  royally;  it 
was  his  nature  to  appraise  as  nothing  the  good  that  he 
did  to  others  ;  therefore  no  word  of  reproach  escaped  him 
where  he  stood  alone  with  her,  on  t  hi-  morning  when  Bhe 
iieeepted  as  a  charmed  gift  from  a  beauteous  fate  the  life 


292  TRICOTRIN, 

that  would  sever  her  from  him  forever.  One  thing  only, 
in  which  would  have  been  for  her  the  deepest  reproach 
of  all,  had  not  her  self-absorption  prevented  her  being 
stung  by  it,  did  he  ask  her.     It  was  simply, 

"  Viva, — do  not  wholly  forget  me!" 

As  it  was  she  felt  in  that  one  moment  of  its  utterance 
a  pang  such  as  rarely  struck  through  the  playfulness  and 
pride,  the  vanity  and  airy  willfulness  of  her  nature. 

She  looked  upward  with  impassioned  feeling. 

"  Forget  you !  If  ever  I  do  may  God  himself  forget 
me!" 

He  shrank  slightly,  as  though  the  future  veiled  from 
her  was  clear  to  him ;  as  though  oblivion  of  himself  were 
so  sure  and  so  inevitable  that  in  her  words  he  heard  her 
self-invocation  of  abandonment  by  her  God. 

"  Make  no  rash  vows,"  he  said  gently.  "  Do  not  touch 
the  future  ;  let  it  come  as  it  will.  Though  you  do  utterly 
forget  me  may  all  that  I  wish  for  you  be  with  you  to 
your  life's  end." 

"  But  how  could  I  forget  you  1"  she  cried,  as  if  in  terror 
at  that  doom  which  to  him  seemed  so  certain,  and  to  her 
so  impossible.  "  Could  I  grow  so  base,  so  cruel,  so  vile, 
so  brutally  unworthy  of  all  your  love  and  pity?" 

He  smiled :  the  smile  she  had  so  often  seen  of  late  ;  of 
a  sadness  she  could  not  gauge,  of  an  irony  she  could  not 
comprehend,  of  a  bitterness  she  could  not  fathom. 

"Nay;  you  will  only  grow — a  beautiful  woman  and 
worldly.  No  more!  An  ingrate?  Well!  are  you  not 
that,  my  little  one,  to  the  good  old  creature  you  call 
grand'mere  ?  Her  heart  hungers  for  you,  you  know  that 
well,  yet  for  sake  of  Madame  la  Duchesse,  and  the  dresses, 
and  the  pleasures,  and  the  jeweled  toys,  you  will  leave 
grand'mere  to  sorrow  alone,  and  be  solaced  as  best  she 
may !" 

Viva's  face  crimsoned. 

"It  is  selfish,  I  know.  It  is  wicked!"  she  murmured. 
"  But  grand'mere  always  said  'never  mind  me,  my  child; 
do  what  pleases  you;'  and  in  a  little  while  I  will  get  them 
to  let  me  go  and  see  her,  and  I  will  show  her  all  my 
pretty  things,  and  take  her  some  presents,  such  as  she 
would " 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         293 

"No!"  he  interrupted  her  with  an  accent  that  was 
almost  savage  in  its  intensity.  "  Do  not  insult  what  you 
desert !  Your  absence  will  shut  the  lasl  lingering  light 
out  of  her  life;  do  not  think  to  heal  the  wound  that  you 
have  made  by  gifts  bought  with  rich  people's  gold!" 

She  was  frightened  and  stilled  by  his  sudden  violence; 
with  it  there  seemed  to  break  on  her  all  the  strength  and 
the  value  of  this  great  love,  all  its  grandeur  and  its  rarity, 
with  which  she  had  played,  knowing  no  more  of  its  force 
and  its  beauty  than  a  little  child  playing  with  sapphires 
and  diamonds  knows  of  their  worth.  With  a  sudden 
impulse  of  remorse,  and  fear,  and  repentance,  she  nerved 
herself  to  sacrifice  all  her  ambitions  and  all  her  delights. 

"  If  you  wish  it  let  me  go  home!"  she  cried,  in  sudden 
and  sincere  renunciation.  "  If  it  pain  you  let  me  stay 
there  always!  I  would  not  give  you  an  hour's  sorrow 
for  all  the  bribes  of  France  !" 

But  in  the  cry  there  was  only  a  love  that  entreated  to 
stay  near  him  for  his  sake,  not  its  own;  a  love  as  of  a 
child's  petulant  pliant  afi'ection;  a  love  that  to  the  burn- 
ing passions  of  the  man  was  well-nigh  worse  than  none; 
a  drop  of  dew  when  lit;  thirsted  for  the  ocean,  a  gleam  of 
light,  making  the  darkness  greater,  a  Tantalus  touch  upon 
the  lips  of  the  fruit  denied  to  them,  a,  ray  of  the  pale 
moon  when  he  longed  for  the  full  rich  glow  of  southern 
suns. 

But  all  that  he  felt  he  restrained. 

"  Not  so,"  he  answered  her.  "  The  die  is  cast  and  you 
must  go,  Viva.  And — to  wish  for  the  time  to  come  when 
you  should  desire  to  ret  urn  would  he  to  wish  your  dreams 
false,  your  faith  betrayed,  your  paradise  poisoned  by  the 
serpent,  your  glorious  hopes  all  cheated  and  misled.  It 
were  to  love  you  ill  to  wish  you  back  at  such  a  <■ 
No!  As  you  are  happy  in  your  new  life  so  will  you 
forget  your  old;  as  you  go  nearer  the  fruition  of  your 
prayers  so  will  you  go  farther  from  me.  So  he  it,  [f  for 
your  joy." 

Once  again  there  stole  upon  her  with  a  sense  of  terror, 
and  of  guilt,  in  her  own  unworthiness,  Borne  perception  of 
the  majesty  and  the  purity  of  this  martyred  love  passion 
whi(d)  asked  nothing  for  itself  bul  all  lor  her.     She  trem- 

25* 


294  TRICOTRIN, 

bled  greatly,  like  one  who  leaves  hold  of  some  long-tried 
and  never-failing  support  to  plunge  .down  into  an  un- 
known abyss. 

He  saw  that,  and  in  his  infinite  self-sacrifice  hastened  to 
comfort  her,  and  to  lead  her  thoughts  from  what  he  suffered. 

"  Now  listen  to  a  few  last  words,"  he  said  softly,  with 
an  effort,  so  successful,  at  his  old  familiar  tone,  that  she 
was  stilled  and  reassured.    "  You  go  to  what  you  desire  : 
you  will  have  riches,  luxuries,  gayeties,  brilliancies,  all 
around  you ;  you  will  have  indulgence,  and  in  a  year  or 
two  more,  homage.     But,  Viva,  none  of  these  things  will 
suffice  to  you  unless  your  own  heart  be  at  peace.     You 
have  a  noble  nature  in  much  ;  but  you  have  grave  errors 
that  will  mar  all  the  rest  if  they  be  allowed  to  grow  and 
to  strengthen.     You  have  delight  in  your  loveliness, — 
that  is  natural :  but  the  illness  of  a  week,  as  I  have  re- 
minded you  ere  now,  may  sweep  it  away  forever.     How 
will  it  be  with  you,  then,  if  your  soul  has  been  anchored 
on  the  allurements  of  your  face  ?    Win  regard  and  attach- 
ment on  something  surer.    You  are  too  proud,  and  every- 
thing in  your  new  existence  will  tend  to  heat  and  to 
pamper  that  fault.     If  you  have  any  tenderness  for  me 
you  will  strive  against  that  besetting  sin  of  yours,  or  it 
will  make  you  very  cold,  very  cruel,  very  arrogant,  very 
avaricious  !     It  will  kill  all  the  divinity  in  you  as  surely 
as  the  frost  kills  the  flowers.     Nor  will  it,  like  the  frost, 
leave  the  good  root  below  unseen,  but  still  not  slain,  to 
blossom  out  again.      For  the  nature  frozen  by  the  ice 
of  greed,  and  vanity,  and  unscrupulous  ambition,  there 
comes  no  spring:  but  all  is  night  and  winter  there.    Keep 
only  such  pride  as  shall  ever  rise  above  all  taint  of  false- 
hood or  of  meanness,  and  gain  you  that  true  dignity,  a 
stainless  name.     To  Madame  de   Lira,  who  henceforth 
will  have  authority  over  you,  you  will  be  gentle,  grateful, 
with  such  reverence  as  becomes  the  young  to  the  old,  and 
never  forgetful  that  you  owe  her  very  much  more  than 
it  will  be  in  your  power  ever  to  repay.    And  for  the  rest, 
— well  ! — the  future  must  bring  you  what  it  will,  but  you 
will  have  the  surest  shield  to  meet  it,  if  you  gain  for  your- 
self that  temper  which  adversity  cannot  appall,  and  pros- 
perity cannot  exalt,  which  knows  not  fear  as  it  knows  not 


THE  STORY  OF  A     WAIF  AND   STRAY.         295 

vanity,  and  which  in  trial  is  dauntless,  as  in  happiness  it 
is  gentle  and  pitiful  of  others.  I  have  read  you  a  homily, 
Viva  mine,  but  I  do  not  think  it  will  be  altogether  for- 
gotten; and  if, — as  you  have  said, — you  deem  that  there 
is  any  question  of  debt  betwixt  you  and  me,  and  you 
would  care  to  reward  me,  and  to  pleasure  me  for  the 
little  I  have  done  for  your  childhood,  show  me  thus  thy 
sincerity  and  fidelity ; — by  curbing-  what  I  who  love  you 
best  have  blamed,  and  by  keeping  your  glorious  nature 
uncorrupted  from  the  world.  When  you  are  tempted, 
Viva,  by  your  beauty,  and  glad  pride,  and  brilliant  be- 
setting sins,  that  seem  to  have  no  evil  to  you,  because 
they  are  masked  in  such  proud  and  witching  disguises, 
think  of  this  that  I  have  asked  of  you; — if  I  have  had  place 
in  your  heart  one  hour  you  will  have  strength  to  resist 
temptation  then." 

His  voice  had  deepened  from  the  playfulness  with 
which  ho  had  at  first  spoken,  into  a  grave  and  earnest 
softness,  but  into  no  other  tenderness  than  that  which  lie 
had  ever  had  of  old  with  her;  the}-  were  wise  ami  gentle 
counsels,  and  all  that  he  called,  not  unjustly,  her  inure 
glorious  nature  awoke  and  stirred  in  instant  and  ardent 
response. 

"I  will,  I  will!"  she  murmured  passionately.  "  I  will 
remember  every  word;  every  time  that  I  am  proud,  and 
wayward,  and  wicked,  1  will  think  of  you;  1  will  try  to 
be  all  you  will ;  1  will  pray  Qighl  and  day  to  God  to  make 
me  so!  And, — as  for  forgetting  you, — Viva  will  never 
lo\  e  any  one  in  the  wide  worldas  she  lo\  es  you.  Never, 
never,  never  !" 

Tricotrin  did  not  answer,  but  he  laid  his  hand  on  her 
lair,  bowed  head,  with  a  smile  infinitely  beautiful,  infi- 
nitely mournful. 

Be  foresaw  the  future  more  clearly  than  she.  There 
was  a  long  silence  in  the  little  luxurious  chamber ;  while 
the  winter  sun  tell  through  the  deep-hued  painted  panes, 
and  touched  them  where  1 1 1 <  y  stood  with  light;  then 
clung  to  him  with  her  old  caressing  grace:  "  Play  to  me 
once  —once  !" 

lie  looked  <m  her,  still  with  the  same  .-mile. 

"  Child,  however  thy  new  life  indulges  thee,  and  .-trews 


290  TRICOTR1N, 

thy  path  with  roses,  thou  wilt  not  be  more  spoilt  than 
thou  hast  been  as  a  Waif!" 

Then  he  bent  his  head,  letting  her  desu-e  be  his  law  ; 
and  that  music,  which  had  given  its  hymn  for  the  vintage 
feast  of  the  Loire,  and  which  had  brought  back  the  steps 
of  the  suicide  from  the  river-brink  in  the  darkness  of  the 
Paris  night,  which  sovereigns  could  not  command,  and 
which  held  peasants  entranced  by  its  spell,  thrilled  through 
the  stillness  of  the  chamber. 

Human  in  its  sadness,  more  than  human  in  its  elo- 
quence, now  melancholy  as  the  Miserere  that  sighs 
through  the  gloom  of  a  cathedral  midnight,  now  rich  as 
the  glory  of  the  after-glow  in  Egypt,  a  poem  beyond 
words,  a  prayer  grand  as  that  which  seems  to  breathe 
from  the  hush  of  mountain  solitudes  when  the  eternal 
snows  are  lighted  by  the  rising  of  the  sun, — the  melody 
of  the  violin  filled  the  silence  of  the  closing  day. 

The  melancholy,  ever  latent  in  the  vivid  natures  of  men 
of  genius,  is  betrayed  and  finds  voice  in  their  Art.  Goethe 
laughs  with  the  riotous  revelers,  and  rejoices  with  the 
summer  of  the  vines,  and  loves  the  glad  abandonment  of 
women's  soft  embraces,  and  with  his  last  words  prays  for 
Light.  But  the  profound  sadness  of  the  great  and  many- 
sided  master-mind  thrills  through  and  breaks  out  in  the 
intense  humanity,  the  passionate  despair  of  Faust;  the 
melancholy  and  the  yearning  of  the  soul  are  there. 

With  Tricotrin  they  were  uttered  in  his  music. 

Other  arts  Earth  still  mingles  with  and  profanes ;  pas- 
sion is  in  the  poet's  words,  the  senses  wake  with  the 
painter's  voluptuous  hues,  and  the  sculptor  dreams  but 
of  the  divine  beauty  of  a  woman's  form ;  but  with  music 
the  soul  escapes  all  bondage,  and  rises  where  the  world 
has  no  share,  unclogged  and  uncompanioned.  His  heart 
spoke  in  those  wild,  pathetic,  nameless,  melodies  as  it 
never  spoke  in  human  language:  he  who  should  have 
read  them  aright  would  have  read  this  man's  life  by  its 
master-key. 

As  Yiva  listened  to  the  harmonies  which  had  been  her 
dearest  delight  from  her  earliest  years,  the  slow  tears 
gathered  in  her  eyes,  the  flush  faded  from  her  face, 
leaving  it  very  pale,  she  pushed  back  the  shining  masses 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AXD   STRAY.         297 

of  hair  off  her  brow,  and  stood  as  she  had  stood  long  be- 
fore in  her  infancy,  when  the  Straduarius  had  decided 
her- destiny. 

Her  future  seemed  to  float  before  her  in  the  rich  fan- 
tastic passionate  waves  of  sound  that  filled  the  stillness, 
— that  future  of  sunlight,  that  future  of  sovereignty! — ■ 
and  still  ever,  through  all  the  glory  of  the  melodies,  one 
under-note  of  deepest  sadness  seemed  to  whisper  that  in 
all  the  life  to  which  she  went,  she  should  find  no  love  that 
would  equal,  in  its  measure  and  its  sacrifice,  this  love  that 
had  sheltered  and  shone  on  her  childhood,  this  love  which 
she  had  now  forsaken. 

Then  suddenly,  the  wondrous  magic  of  the  music  ceased, 
and  dropped,  and  died ;  and  she  threw  herself  on  her  knees 
before  him. 

"Ah  !  if  I  heard  that  music  always,  I  should  never  be 
proud  and  vain  and  wayward;  I  should  love  and  pity  all 
the  world  ;  I  should  do  your  will,  and  God's  !" 

Tricotrin  smiled,  and  the  smile  was  like  his  melodies. 

"Viva  mine,  were  we  all  what  we  are  in  our  holiest 
moments,  we  were  all  godlike!  Treasure  the  music  in 
thy  heart  then  ;  so  will  it  be  thy  guardian-angel.  So  shall 
I  have  one  gift  to  give  thee  !      And  now — farewell  !'* 

At  that  one  word,  all  the  anguish  of  severance  came 
on  her;  she  loved  him  with  fervent,  tender,  clinging  affec- 
tion, though  she  loved  yet  more  dearly  her  vanity  and  her 
pride.  She  had  dwelt  joyously  away  from  him  because 
she  had  been  so  sure  she  could  go  back  to  him  ;  but  now 
that  she  had  to  part  with  him,  and  from  the  home  that  he 
had  given  her,  without  power  to  return  to  them,  the  fond- 
ness that  she  bore  for  both  conquered  every  other  feeling, 
and  she  sobbed  as  though  her  very  heart  were  breaking, 
her  head  bowed  on  his  breast,  her  hair  flung  over  his 
arms. 

She  did  nol  feel  the  shudder  that  ran  through  him  at 
her  touch;  she  only  heard  the  gentleness  of  the  voice 
upon  her  ear. 

"My  child  of  chance  !  The  fairies  call  thee  to  their 
Avillion  where  are  no  toil,  no  pain,  no  shame,  i<>  gall  thy 
heart  and  fret  thy  pride.  No  poor  grape  garland  to  lie 
heavy  on  thy  brows,  no  lives  of  labor  about  thee  to  make 


298  TRICOTRJN, 

thee  dread  a  great  man's  sneer.  Go  with  a  happy  heart, 
and  spoil  not  thy  present  by  looking-  backward  at  thy  past. 
The  past,  however  bright  when  it  was  'present,'  is  ever 
dark  with  vain  desire  when  it  lies  behind  us,  like  the  lands 
from  whose  sky  the  sun  has  long  gone  down.  Remember 
that!" 

She  made  him  no  reply;  but  silently  clung  to  him 
weeping  in  a  very  convulsion  of  love  and  of  repentance; 
a  summer  tempest  soon  to  pass,  yet  none  less  vivid  and 
desolating,  because  fated  to  be  evanescent. 

He  looked  mutely  down  upon  her ;  and  where  her 
head  was  hidden  on  his  breast  she  could  not  see  the 
yearning  passion  that  his  eyes  spoke,  for  one  moment 
unrestrainedly,  because  it  knew  itself  unread  and  unsus- 
pected. 

"  Ab,  true  to  thy  sex  1"  he  murmured  bitterly.  "  Thou 
mournest  me  now,  a  day  hence  and  I  shall  be  forgotten!" 

A  burning  flush  dyed  her  face  as  she  lifted  it  with 
impetuous  eagerness  of  denial. 

"  Never,  never,  never  !  I  shall  never  forget  you  till  I 
die!" 

The  smile  that  made  her  tremble,  why  she  could  not 
have  told,  was  still  upon  his  lips — the  smile  of  so  much 
tenderness,  of  such  little  faith. 

"You  will  die  early  then!  Nay!  live  in  joy  ever, 
though  not  a  thought  of  me  pass  over  thee.  My  child — 
my  love  !     Farewell !" 

He  held  her  one  moment  longer  in  his  embrace,  one 
moment  longer  pressed  his  lips  on  hers :  then,  ere  she 
knew  it,  drew  her  still  closer  yet,  once  more,  thrust  her 
quickly  from  his  arms  and  left  her ;  their  lives  were  cut 
in  twain  forever. 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  J'i!) 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

Wild  winds  were  driving  snow  across  the  vineyards 
and  the  plains  in  blinding  white  sheets  of  powder;  the 
swollen  river  was  black  and  angry,  rushing  in  stormy  tide 
and  eddy  between  its  brimming  banks ;  in  spots  where 
its  torrent  had  overflowed,  a  dark  sullen  sheet  of  water 
spread  over  submerged  meadows  or  ruined  gardens  ;  the 
night  was  tempestuous,  starless,  heavy-laden  with  snow  ; 
through  it  Tricotrin  passed,  insensible  to  the  furious 
blasts,  the  icy  cold,  the  perils  of  the  flood,  the  fatigue  of 
every  step. 

When  here  and  there  the  dim  reflection  of  some  lan- 
tern, hung  upon  some  wayside  cross  to  guide  the  way  of 
travelers,  fell  upon  his  face,  it  was  very  pale,  and  his 
eyes  looked  straight  forward  into  the  unbroken  gloom, 
unblinded  by  the  sleel  that  drove  against  them:  in  his 
breast  curled  Mistigri,  and  with  one  arm  he  held  her 
there  and  sheltered  her  from  the  night. 

He  made  his  way,  by  instind  and  by  habit,  to  one 
familiar  place  ;  thegreal  chestnul  branches  were  groaning 
in  the  gale,  the  rush  of  the  river  below  the  rocky  slope 
was  like  the  swelling  hoarseness  of  the  sea,  the  wind  was 
tearing  the  ivy  from  the  stones  where  it  had  dung  so 
long,  and  scaring  the  birds  in  terror  from  its  shelter. 

There  was  a  ray  of  yellow  lighl  streaming  from  an 
oval  hole  in  the  shutter;  through  Li  the  homely  interior 
was  visible,  ruddy  with  the  cheerfulness  of  burning  wood, 
and  with  the  form  of  an  old  peasant-woman  alone  within 
it.  Srand'mere  sat,  by  the  wood  fire  on  her  hearth,  half 
asleep  in  the  twilight,  her  high  white  head-dress  nodding 
to  and  fro,  the  chestnuts  cracking  in  the  embers,  the 
white  cal  Bebee  purring  in  the  warmth. 

She  started,  and  clicked  across  the  Boor  in  her  wooden 
shoes,  as  a  knock  came  on  i  he  door  of  her  dwelling.     She 

threw   it   wide    open    with    her   oil    lamp    held   above    her 


300  TRICOTRIN, 

head,  and  gave  a  loud  glad  cry ;  then  she  trembled  till 
the  lamp  rays  flickered  like  a  candle  flame  blown  about  t 
in  the  wind. 

"  Where  is  the  child  ?"  she  asked. 

"  The  child  is  well,  grand'mere." 

Then  he  entered  and  shook  off  the  snow  that  had 
fallen  on  his  beard  and  blouse ;  and  took  the  little  shiver- 
ing Mistigri  from  his  bosom,  and  put  her  kindly  down 
beside  Bebee,  and  unstrapped  his  knapsack  and  laid  it  on 
a  wooden  settle.  At  last  with  an  exceeding  gentleness 
he  turned  and  took  the  two  old  withered  hands  within 
his  own,  and  looked  down  into  the  eyes  that  had  watched 
him  with  such  mute  pathetic  entreaty. 

"You  can  bear  pain,  grand'mere?" 

She  gazed  at  him  with  a  hard,  fixed,  agonized  regard 
that  searched  his  very  heart. 

"Paris  has  taken  her  1 "  she  said  slowly,  with  a  terrible 
bitterness.  "I  have  known  it  long.  Paris  is  fed  with 
all  our  blood,  all  our  beauty,  all  our  youth,  all  our  inno- 
cence :  Paris  is  never  quieted.  The  children  come  to  the 
birth  and  lie  at  the  breast  only  to  be  devoured  by  her 
when  they  have  fairness  or  strength  in  their  frame!" 

Then  casting  her  serge  gown  over  her  head  as  a  matron 
of  Rome  cast  her  robes,  she  turned  from  him  and  leaned 
against  the  wall,  silent.  To  her  there  was  no  need  to  say 
more:  Paris,  that  fatal,  beautiful,  cruel,  pitiless  thing  that 
drew  all  lives  within  its  murderous  embrace,  had  taken 
the  child — all  was  told. 

Tricotrin  laid  his  hand  on  her  shoulder. 

"Grand'mere,  it  is  not  so  bad  as  you  think.  Believe 
me,  it  is  well  with  Viva." 

The  old  woinan  uncovered  her  head,  and  looked  at  him 
with  all  the  fire  of  her  youth  flashing  through  the  slow 
salt  tears  of  age. 

"So  they  said, — each  one  of  them!  My  noble  boys! 
It  was  well  with  them  they  thought — the  city  was  so 
grand,  and  the  wage  so  good,  and  the  mirth  so  gay,  how 
should  they  have  deemed  otherwise?  Paris  wore  a  smil- 
ing front  to  them;  she  smiles  always,  until  she  sucks  the 
life  out  of  their  veins,  like  the  bat  that  fans  men  to  slum- 
ber to  kill  them.     Antoine  wrote  me  it  was  so  well  with 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  301 

him !  He  fought  for  liberty,  he  was  kissed  on  the  mouth 
by  fair  women  who  called  him  a  hero ;  he  dreamed  of 
freedom  for  all  France,  and  of  the  love  and  the  patience 
of  God  breathed  into  the  hard  souls  of  men.  That  was 
how  she  lured  him,  that  Paris,  whose  stones  drank  his 
blood.  And  he  died  in  his  youth,  with  the  balls  fired 
into  his  breast!" 

"I  know — I  know!     But  Viva " 

"She  has  gone  where  he  went! — where  his  brethren 
went !"  she  interrupted  him  fiercely,  every  line  of  her 
brown  withered  face  quivering  with  grief  aud  with  pas- 
sion. "They  could  never  come  back;  nor  could  she,  I 
know  well.  It  is  ever  the  same  with  Paris — she  draws 
them  all  in,  the  youths  and  the  maidens,  and  when  she 
has  got  them,  she  pits  them  one  against  each  other  to  ruin 
them  all — the  men  to  tempt  the  maidens,  breathing  lust 
in  their  ear,  and  pressing  gold  in  their  hands;  the  women 
to  lure  the  youths,  kissing  them  blind  with  bought  kisses, 
and  teaching  them  the  pleasure  that  kills!  How  should 
she  come  back?  Can  the  clay  come  unburnt  from  the 
furnace?  Can  the  callow-bird  return  from  the  throat  of 
the  squirrel  that  lias  drawn  down  and  devoured  it?  Why 
did  you  not  Blay  her  with  your  own  hand  rather  than 
take  her  to  that  gilded  and  honeyed  death  that  steals  the 
soul  with  the  body?" 

Then,  once  more  she  turned  her  head  from  him,  and 
wepl — wept  as  the  aged  weep,  without  hope. 

He  waited  awhile  till  her  grief,  wrought  almost  to 
frenzy,  should  have  grown  calmer. 

In  the  light  of  the  hearth  Mistigri  trembled,  and  watched 

them  with  her  black  and  melancholy  eyes,  and  stole  closer 

to  Bebee,  who,  himself,  slept  and  purred  on.  indifferent, 

so  loDg  as  the  fire  burned  bright  to  warm  him. 

After  awhile,  Tricotrin  spoke,  and  told  her  the  truth 
as  it  stood,  ami  .-trove  to  soften  the  blow,  a.-  besl  it  could 
be  softened,  by  tidings  of  tin'  child's  joy  and  safety. 

Grand'mere  heard  him  in  unbroken  silence;  her  gaze 
never  leaving  his  face,  and  reading  there  that  she  did 
not.  suffer  alone. 

Of  his  own  trial  he  -aid  naught  ;  he  dwelt  only  on  the 
brightness,  on  the  security,  on  the  eminence  of  the  future 

26 


302  TRICOTRIN, 

that  Viva  had  chosen.  What  was  heartless  in  her  con- 
duct he  left  unrecorded;  what  was  tender  and  generous 
he  lingered  over.  Yet,  despite  himself,  the  story  was  told 
in  weariness,  and  had  the  chill  of  grief  in  it,  as  the  snow 
drifted  up  against  the  lattice-window,  and  the  red  flame 
grew  low  in  its  socket. 

They  knew  that  never  again  would  the  child's  form — 
that  had  lent  such  light  and  grace  to  the  little  homely 
chamber  with  its  blackened  elm  wainscots  and  its  white- 
washed walls,  and  its  pendant  strings  of  thyme,  and 
onions,  and  pumpkins  swaying  from  the  rafters — come 
thither  to  dance  upon  the  bare  floor,  and  mirror  itself  in 
the  burnished  coppers. 

The  old  peasant  heard  without  answering  a  word;  her 
face  did  not  even  change  when  he  spoke  of  the  offer  which 
the  duke,  in  considerate  kindliness,  had  sent  for  her  to 
make  her  home  near  Viva's  new  resting-place. 

"  You  need  feel  no  sorrow,  no  separation,"  Tricotrin, 
giving  the  message,  pursued.  "They  wish  that  you 
should  live  in  all  comfort  and  peace  near  her.  They 
desire  that  you  should  go  where  she  will  go,  and  dwell 
on  the  Lira  estates,  where  you  will  see  her  most  likely 
with  every  succeeding  autumn  of  each  year.     You " 

She  rose  and  stopped  him,  and  spoke  for  the  first  time 
since  her  paroxysm  of  dread  and  of  despair  at  Paris  had 
broken  forth,  in  eloquent,  quivering  invective. 

"Tricotrin — I  am  an  old  woman,  and  poor,  and  the 
time  for  my  hand-labor  is  well-nigh  passed.  But — if  so 
it  be  willed  that  I  live  on  and  on  through  other  desolate 
years,  I  will  go  out  and  wash  linen  in  the  river,  clear  in- 
sects from  the  vines,  gather  fruits  for  the  markets,  weed 
stones  from  the  trefoil,  and  beetroot,  and  sainfoin,  ere  ever 
I  will  take  bit  or  drop,  log  of  wood  or  roof  of  house  from 
those  who  have  robbed  us  of  her!" 

"Nay,  it  is  no  robbery.     They  mean  aright " 

"  Aright  ?  Can  it  be  aright  to  build  the  pile  of  her 
glories  on  the  stone  of  her  ingratitude  ?  Can  it  be  aright 
to  bid  a  young  child  forget  the  one  debt  of  her  life  ? 
Can  it  be  aright  to  take  her  into  high  places,  where  she 
shall  learn  to  blush  to  tell  truth  of  herself?  But  let  that 
be  !     I  have  no  wish  to  say  ill  of  her.     She  has  been  as 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AN/)   STRAY.         303 

the  core  of  my  heart  for  too  long;.  Only  let  them  know 
this, — though  I  shall  hunger  like  one  in  fa  mine  for  the 
sigh.t.of  her  face  and  the  sound  of  her  voice,  I  will  never 
go  nigh  those  who  have  led  her  astray.  I  have  no  title 
to  dwell  longer  under  this  roof,  which  was  only  kept  for 
her  sake;  but  I  have  strength  still,  and  I  will  go  ami  lie 
down  with  the  oxen,  and  ask  the  fowls  for  their  corn,  be- 
fore I  will  take  alms  at  the  hands  of  your  spoilers.  I 
have  spoken  I" 

There  was  resolve,  so  strong  and  so  proud,  on  her 
face,  that  it  rendered  almost  beautiful  the  aged,  weather- 
beaten,  sun-bronzed  features  ;  her  eyes  kindled,  her  mouth 
set,  her  voice  grew  clearer;  all  the  bold,  hardy,  peasant 
blood  in  her  rose  as  it  had  risen  when  she  was  offered 
the  government-alms  she  Hung  back,  to  the  rulers  who 
had  sent  out  her  firstborn  to  perish  in  Africa. 

Tricotrin  saw  and  heard  ;  and  he  benl  his  head  with 
the  reverence  he  ever  gave  to  the  pure  honesty  of  this 
simple  ami  undaunted  nature. 

"  Grrand'mere !  There  is  no  need  to  think  of  that. 
This  place  is  yours  so  long  as  you  shall  will  to  have  it  so. 
You  cannot  deem  so  ill  of  me  as  to  think  that " 

"Tricotrin,  you  are  a  generous  man;  we  know  that 
well,''  she  'answered  him.  with  the  anguish  ami  the  wrath 
in  her  eyes  softening  away.  "I  have  never  been  two 
leagues  outside  my  own  vine  country,  and  shall  not  begin 
my  travels  now.  But  neither  have  I  ever  lived  on  alms, 
nor  will  I  now.  While  I  could  serve — her,  it  was  just 
that  J  should  take  your  bread;  but  now  thai  1  am  of  no 
use,  how  should  [justify  myself  to  eal  it  ':" 

"Hush!"  he  said,  gently,, and  his  voice  had  an  unut- 
terable sweetness  in  it.  "Every  man  owes  a  debl  to  his 
mother;  mine  died  ere  I  knew  her.  1  can  only  pay  ii  t< 
her  sex.  Do  not  fly  from  my  shelter.  Your  hearth  is 
the  only  home  that  1  know.  Keep  it. — lesl  ever  I  wander 
to  it  weary  and  maimed.  Keep  it. — lesl  ever  the  child 
that  you  lose  should  find  her  visions  lade  as  she  pursues 
them,  and  learn  to  long  for  its  refuge  and  pine  for  its 
peace." 

As  he  spoke,  the  brave.  strong,  sunburnt  lace,  on  which 


304  TRICOTRIN, 

the  light  from  the  fire  played,  grew  paler  and  more  tender, 
till  all  the  passion  died  from  it. 

"  Tricotrin, — you  are  a  noble  heart,"  she  said,  slowly. 
"  You  know  how  to  cover  your  charities  with  the  grace 
and  the  goodness  of  souls  that  give  as  God  gives  the  sun 
and  the  fruits  and  the  harvest.  But  think  you  she  will 
ever  come  back? — nay,  listen.  I  thought  so  too  when 
my  lads  went  forth  ;  they  flung  their  glad  arms  round  me, 
and  they  kissed  me  with  their  honest  lips,  and  they  all 
whispered  in  my  ear  'we  shall  be  back  so  soon!'  And 
the  one  would  come  as  a  great  soldier  with  crosses  on  his 
breast ;  and  the  other  would  come  as  a  rich  man  to  wed 
the  little  yellow-haired  girl  at  the  water-mill,  and  rear  up 
his  young  children  around  me ;  and  Antoine — my  hand- 
some Antoine  ! — would  come  as  a  liberator,  as  a  redeemer, 
as  a  chief  of  the  people,  to  bind  France  in  one  vast 
brotherhood  of  peace.  Well !  one  was  slaughtered  in 
African  raids ;  and  one  was  crushed  by  a  building  stone ; 
and  one  was  shot  down  by  his  countrymen's  carbines. 
That  is  how  they  '  come  back'  to  us — the  children  of  our 
love!" 

She  turned  away,  and  employed  herself  in  her  homely 
household  cares,  heaping  the  wood  upon  the  flames,  scald- 
ing some  red  wine  in  a  copper  stoup,  brushing  the  snow 
down  from  off  his  outer  garment.  The  peasant  instinct 
and  habit  of  her  life  led  her  to  labor  as  the  only  palliative 
of  woe. 

"  It  is  an  awful  night,  Tricotrin,"  she  said,  spreading 
bread  and  chestnuts  before  him.  "  You  must  have  felt 
the  storm  bitterly." 

He  bent  his  head  in  silence.  The  food  and  the  steam- 
ing wine  stood  untouched  beside  him.  "Looking  at  him 
earnestly,  as  in  the  first  hour  of  her  anguish  she  had  been 
too  blinded  by  her  grief  to  do,  she  saw  that  the  fairness  of 
his  face  had  lost  all  color,  and  that  the  sun-hued  waves  of 
his  hair  were  whitening  with  other  silver  than  the  silver 
of  the  snow. 

And  her  heart  hardened  against  the  child  whom  she 
had  nurtured  and  cherished  from  that  early  time  when 
the  tearful  smiling  eyes  of  the  forsaken  thing  had  first 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         305 

looked  up  at  her  from  the  ferns  and  the  blue  fraxinella. 
She  laid  her  brown,  wrinkled  hand  gently  on  his  shoulder. 

"Tricotrin, — when  my  sons  went  forth,  one  spoke  of 
duty  to  his  flag,  and  one  spoke  of  duty  to  his  betrothed, 
and  oDe  spoke  of  duty  to  his  country ;  but  not  one  of  the 
three  remembered  that  duty  might  lie  nearer  his  own 
hearth;  not  one  of  the  three  remembered  that  I  hud 
endured  the  pangs  of  their  birth,  the  woes  of  their  infancy, 
the  fret  of  their  passions,  the  evils  of  their  maintenance. 
The  children  never  remember — they  live  in  themselves. 
But  when  in  turn  they  grow  heart-sick,  and  are  betrayed, 
and  hunger  and  thirst,  desolate  amid  the  wealth  of  the 
world,  then  they  remember  us,  and  yearn  for  us — then  we 
are  avenged.  She  forgets  you  now.  In  the  day  of  her 
necessity  she  will  pray  for  you,  and,  it  may  be,  pray 
vainly." 

A  shiver,  that  was  not  of  the  cold  of  the  night,  shook 
him  as  he  heard.  The  deep  quivering  voice  of  the  speaker 
had  the  terror  as  of  prophecy  in  it. 

"God  forbid,"  he  answered  her,  "that  ever  my  ven- 
geance should  come  so  I" 

"  It  would  be  but  justice,"  she  muttered.  "But  the 
only  justice  we  get  upon  earth  breaks  our  own  hearts 
when  it  falls." 

And  she  left  him,  and  went  into  her  own  chamber,  and 
wept  bitterly,  as  the  aged  alone  weep,  when  the  light  of 
their  eyes  has  passed  from  them  for  evermore,  and  none 
other  can  ever  illumine  the  brief  dark  space  that  parts 
them  from  the  grave. 


2fi* 


306  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

"  Write  to  me  to  the  care  of  Mere  Rose,"  he  had  said, 
when  he  had  parted  from  her.  "If  thou  art  happy — keep 
silence.     But  when  aught  pains  thee,  write." 

To  the  house  in  the  Pays  Latin,  where  she  had  once 
heard  the  grisette  sigh  for  those  who  went  to  the  Rome 
of  their  desires,  her  letters  flew,  for  awhile,  swiftly  as 
carrier-pigeons.  For  the  heart  of  the  child  was  at  un- 
rest, and  full  of  love,  and  therefore  full  of  love's  twin- 
brother,  pain. 

When  the  spring  deepened  to  summer,  the  winged 
words  came  more  seldom.  They  were  carrier-birds  made 
laggard  by  the  tempting  of  warm  suns  and  luscious  fruits, 
and  by  the  luring  melody  of  winds  and  waters. 

With  the  autumn  but  very  few  ever  came.  They  were 
as  doves  that  would  not  answer  to  those  who  murmured 
their  old  familiar  names,  because  they  better  loved  the 
peace  and  the  abundaflce  of  the  palm-groves  in  a  new 
and  brighter  land. 

Through  the  year  that  followed  they  almost  ceased ; 
one,  here  and  there,  in  a  stretch  of  many  months,  still 
coming,  like  the  single  bird  that  bore  the  olive-branch  of 
hope. 

Not  seldom  he  would  make  long  pilgrimages  from  north 
or  south,  from  east  or  west,  to  ask  that  single  question : 
"is  there  any  letter,  Mere  Rose?" 

And  when  she,  leaning  from  her  lattice,  would  shake 
her  head,  with  tears  in  her  brown  comely  eyes,  he  would 
turn  away. 

"  So  best:  it  is  well  with  her  then." 

But  the  woman  would  murmur  fiercely  and  sadly,  in 
her  throat :  "  Nay  !  it  is  ill." 

And  he  knew  that  she  was  right. 

With  her  body,  with  her  beauty,  with  her  youth  it  was 
well :  but  with  her  soul  ? 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  307 

At  length,  one  day  in  a  fragrant  spring  time,  when  all 
the  city  blossomed  and  laughed  with  flower  and  song. 
Mere  Rose  reached  down  from  her  casement,  and  in  her 
hand  lay  a  letter,  like  a  little,  white,  tired  bird. 

lie  took  it  with  a  light  in  his  eyes  that  was  not  from 
the  bright  noon  sun:  and  when  he  had  read  it,  and  an- 
other one  that  lay  within  it,  he  reeled  slightly  like  a  man 
under  a  blow,  and  his  lips  grew  white,  and  he  stood  stain- 
ing blankly  up  at  the  bright  sun  and  seeing  naught. 

"Is  she  dead  ?"  cried  the  woman,  from  the  lattice  above. 

He  looked  up  at  her  with  blind  eyes,  and  answered 
nothing,  but  went  slowly  away  down  the  long  street, 
with  heavy  staggering  steps,  as  of  one  in  whom  there  is 
no  life  left. 

The  city  was  filled  with  buds,  and  blossoms,  and  green 
leaves,  and  with  the  singing  of  students  and  maidens, 
and  with  the  joyous  laughter  of  children,  and  with  the 
fragrance  of  tossing  lilacs,  blue  and  white,  that  were 
flung  upward  by  boyish  hands  in  the  sunlight  of  the  feast 
day. 

But  Merc  Rose,  leaning  at  her  casement,  heard  nothing, 
and  saw  nothing  of  these.  She  was  looking  down  the 
street  after  the  man  in  whose  hand  the  letter  was  hidden 
like  a  snake  that  stings  the  hand%hieh  fed  it  ;  and  from 
his  form,  as  he  passed  away  into  the  shadow  casl  by  a 
dim  old  gothie  church,  her  eyes  wandered  into  the  cham- 
ber of  the  opposite  house.  The  casement  stood  open; 
and  in  the  darkness  stood  the  coffin  of  a  woman  within. 

It  waited  for  burial  until  the  festal  time  of  the  May- 
day had  come  and  gone. 

''Ah,  thou  saidst  truly,  poor  little  one!"  murmured 
Mere  Rose,  gazing  into  the  chamber  of  death,  so  quiet 
and  so  dark,  amid  the  light  ami  the  song  and  the  blos- 
som of  the  world  around.  "They  come  back  from  Rome 
— yesl     But  back  to  those  whom  they  lefi — neverl" 


308  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  XXX. 


(i 


'Is  the  child  dead,  grand'rnere?"  the  people  of  the 
vine  country  asked  with  bated  breath  and  anxious  eyes. 

"Yes — she  is  dead,"  the  old  woman  answered  ever: 
and  would  say  no  more  to  all  the  eager,  curious,  unceasing 
questions  that  were  put  to  her  by  those  who  met  her  at 
the  little  chapel  in  the  fields,  or  in  the  woods  where  she 
gathered  her  fuel;  on  the  straight  road  across  the  plain, 
as  they  rode  their  mules  to  market,  or  by  the  towing- 
path  as  they  walked  above  their  slowly-laboring  boats. 

"She  is  dead,"  was  all  she  answered:  and  they  knew 
that  it  was  just  thus  that  she  had  spoken  when  the  story 
had  come  from  Paris,  creeping  tardily  and  terribly  through 
the  awe-stricken  country  in  its  hot  hush  of  midsummer 
silence,  that  her  youngest-born  had  fallen  under  the  bul- 
lets, with  the  hymn  of  liberty  on  his  lips. 

"The  child  was  de^cl,"  they  murmured  among  them- 
selves :  they  did  not  feel  much  wonder ;  she  had  never 
been  one  of  them ;  she  had  never  seemed  of  their  mould 
and  of  their  kind ;  she  had  always  been  invested  to  their 
sight  with  something  rare  and  strange,  and  not  of  mortal 
birth.  They  had  watched  her  careless,  useless,  cloudless 
life  among  the  sunshine  and  the  flowers,  so  unlike  to 
their  own  hard,  toilsome,  and  unlovely  lives,  as  they  might 
have  watched  some  paradise-bird,  had  one  flown,  of  a 
sudden,  down  amid  the  swallows  of  the  hamlets,  and 
the  plovers  of  the  fields,  with  all  the  colors  of  the  east 
upon  its  gorgeous  wings.  "  She  was  dead,"  they  repeated 
among  themselves;  and  broidered  on  the  naked  barren 
fact  a  thousand  tales  woven  at  evening  with  their  wo- 
men's flax  upon  the  wheel,  or  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth 
with  the  stone-picking  in  the  cornlands,  and  the  insect- 
seeking  amid  the  vines 

Louis  Sarazin,  at  the  ferry,  knew  the  truth  ;  but  Sarazin 
never  spoke  of  it.     He  only  covered  over  with  a  piece  of 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         309 

tarpaulin,  the  bench  on  which  she  had  used  to  sit  in  the 
stern  of  his  old  black  boat,  and  let  no  passenger  be  seated 
there.  And  he  would  stand  very  quietly  a1  the  door  of 
his  cottage,  looking  wistfully  down  the  stream,  hour  after 
hour,  if  none  disturbed  him,  with  the  broken  oar  or  the 
torn  sail  in  his  hand,  unniended. 

"They  all  go  down  that  river,  see  you?"  he  would 
mutter  to  bis  dog.  "But  none  of  them  come  back;  I 
suppose  they  never  want  the  old  landing-place  any  more. 
Is  it  all  smooth  water  there?  Ai*e  there  no  shallows  and 
no  speats  ?  Do  they  not  have  to  row  against  the  incoming 
tide  at  any  time,  I  wonder?  I  suppose  not,  for  they  never 
want  the  old  landing-place  any  more." 

Those  who  heard  him,  said  that  in  his  great  age  his 
brain  wandered,  that  his  senses  were  gone,  that  he  saw 
in  his  silent  highway  the  highroad  of  human  life,  and 
grew  mad  thereon.  Only  his  dog  was  wiser;  his  dog 
only  knew  his  meaning,  and  pressed  more  closely,  and 
licked  his  withered  bony  hand  in  tender  consolation. 

"She  was  dead:"  to  all  her  little  native  world  about 
the  river,  on  which  her  glad  eyes  had  opened  with  so  many 
summer  dawns.  A  few  among  them  said  prayers  for  her 
departed  soul  when  they  kneeled  down  at  the  wayside 
cross,  from  which  the  thatched  roof  of  the  home  that  she 
hail  shared  with  the  swallows  was  visible  where  ii  thrust 
itself  through  its  cover  of  green  leaves.  Bui  the  greater 
number  took  the  words  as  holding  but  a  figurative  mean- 
ing, and  believed  that  tin-  child  of  the  fairies  had  gone  to 
that  strange  land  whence  she  came,  and  whispered  mar- 
velous thiugs  of  her,  where  they  sat  by  the  lighl  of  the 
oak  log  of  Noel,  or  brought  the  wagons  of  grapes  to 
the  wine-press  in  the  shade  of  the  autumn-browned 
boughs. 

I'.ut  away  southward,  when  gossips  met  in  the  porch 
of  the  dairy-house  I  hat  looked  out  over  the  broad,  low-lying 
water-threaded  pastures  about  Villiers  a  great-limbed, 
brown-faced,  tawny-skinned  milkwoman,  wiih  her  arms 
akimbo,  and  a  brutal  laugh  on  her  mouth,  scoffed  al  her 
neighbors'  regrel  and  mocked  at  their  idiotcy. 

"Dead?  Dead?  That  is  what  ihey  alway-  -:iv  when 
one  of  their  angels  has  fallen!     Dead?     She  is  no  more 


I 


310  TRICOTRIN, 

dead  than  we  are.  She  is  gone  to  riches  and  shame,  that 
I  warrant  you.  Oh  ho !  have  you  forgot  the  little  liar's 
story  of  the  magic  fruit  and  the  sorcerer's  ring  on  the 
Indian  jasmine?  And  who  was  the  sorcerer  except 
our  young  lord? — and  what  do  his  dainty  jewels  always 
betoken  ?  How  blind  ye  are,  blind  as  bats  that  butt 
themselves  against  a  barn  door  when  they  are  driven  out 
of  their  nests  at  noonday  1  Dead  ?  If  she  be  dead,  then 
are  my  cows  dead  where  they  graze  yonder.  She  was 
bad,  I  tell  you;  bad,  core  through,  like  a  gourd  that  has 
the  worm.  Did  she  not  call  us  a  set  of  senseless  peasants  ? 
and  she  a  bastard  too,  a  bastard  most  like  of  the  man  that 
fed  her !  Well — I  shall  know  that  lily-white  face  of  hers, 
with  its  mouth  like  yon  carnation,  and  its  hair  like  ripened 
wheat,  a  score  years  hence  if  ever  my  eyes  light  on  it. 
Dead  ?  she  is  no  more  dead  than  that  mouse  that  skirries 
over  the  floor.     She  is  only — gone  to  Paris !" 

And  she  laughed  again,  cruelly,  in  the  mellow  waning 
evening  time  ;  for  jealousy  is  lusty  of  life,  and  tenacious 
of  it,  and  is  as  the  toad  which  can  lie  stirless  under  a 
stone  through  many  seasons,  yet  keep  its  sight  and  its 
venom  unspent,  to  use  when  the  stone  that  has  held  it 
down  is  rolled  off  it. 

Now,  which  was  the  truer  version,  hers,  or  that  gentler 
belief  which  mourned  the  child  as  innocent  and  lost,  none 
could  tell:  for  to  all  questions  grand'mere  answered  ever, 
"She  is  dead." 

And  Tricotrin  came  no  more  into  the  vine  country  at 
the  harvest-time. 

The  pipers  piped,  and  the  maidens  danced,  and  the  oxen 
drew  their  loaded  wains  crowned  with  green  branches, 
and  the  ruddy  blossoms  of  the  declining  years ;  but  no 
more  was  heard  that  sweet,  wild,  rapturous  music  that 
had  caught  in  it  all  the  cadences  that  the  fauns  of  old  had 
danced  to  in  the  virgin  foi'ests,  while  yet  the  world  and 
the  gods  had  been  young. 

And  to  the  people  who  had  loved  him,  there  seemed  a 
silence  through  the  land. 


TIIE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         31 1 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

On  the  wild  western  seaboard,  a  little  hamlet  hung 
upon  the  rocks  like  a  curlew's  storm-swept  nest,  high  in 
air,  and  overlooking  the  wide  Biscayan  waters. 

The  great  black  cliffs  were  dark  as  night;  the  chasms 
between  them  were  yawning  pits,  of  which  no  men  living 
told  the  depth;  the  land  for  leagues  on  leagues  inland 
was  a  desolate  heath,  a  wilderness  of  thorny  gorse,  broken 
only  by  gray  stones  of  shattered  Druid  altars. 

Life  was  hard  there;  a  long  incessant  struggle  with  all 
the  forces  of  the  earth  and  elements,  a  never-ending  con- 
test with  the  winds  and  waters  to  snatch  the  scant)  bitter 
bread  of  bare  subsistence  from  out  the  fishers' mouths. 
In  the  long,  tempestuous,  cruel  winters,  death  entered 
well-nigh  every  bousehold,  and  few  boats  returned  with 
all  those  who,  at  their  setting  forth,  had  manned  them. 
The  children  were  early  braced  to  peril,  and  scourged 
with  the  stripes  of  the  sharp  sea  foam.  The  aged  were 
old  long  ere  their  time,  and  toiled  like  nudes  up  and  down 
the  steep  stairs  of  rock,  laden  like  mules  with  driftwood, 
or  with  weed  dung  upward  by  the  storms. 

There  was  a  little  chapel  on  one  of  the  highest  ridges 
of  the  rocks,  where  a  light  burned  steadfastly  all  through 
the  blackest  nights  of  hurricane.  There  were  a  few  buts 
thai  formed  the  village,  all  huddled  together  in  the  hollow 
oft  he  cliff,  like  callow-birds  fearful  of  coming  rain.  There 
were  men,  melancholy,  taciturn,  rugged,  of  a  hard  sim- 
plicity, of  a  doglike  fidelity,  like  mosl  duellers  of  the 
mountains  or  by  the  ocean.  There  were  women  with  the 
old,  iron  heroism  of  amazonian  times,  whose  naked  limbs 
were  beaten  by  the  billows,  and  whose  massive  arms 
w  reached  drowning  bodies  from  the  breakers,  till  nothing 
of  womanhood  remained  in  their  asped  exc<  pi  in  the  .-ad 
.steadv  gaze  of  their  large  brooding  eyes. 

They  were  a  rough,  and  sometimes  a  brutal  people. 


312  TRICOTRIN, 

They  were  often  beset  with  the  torment  of  famine ;  their 
pitiless  stony  shores  would  yield  them  little,  and  in 
revenge  they  were,  in  many  seasons,  without  mercy  to 
those  who  were  cast  away  upon  their  rocks.  There  were 
men  among  them  who  thought  little  of  drawing  a  knife 
across  the  neck  of  a  wrecked  sailor,  and  robbing  the  dead 
of  the  gold  rings  in  his  ears.  They  were  very  lonely  in 
their  wind-beaten  fastnesses,  where  their  only  mates  were 
the  seagulls  and  eagles ;  they  grew  half  savage,  as  those 
who  live  in  such  isolation  will.  Hunger  bit  them  sharply 
at  times ;  and  when  they  were  famished  they  turned  on 
any  prey  like  lions. 

There  were  higher  natures  among  them,  on  which 
solitude  and  privation  had  not  this  influence,  on  which 
the  noble  sublimity  and  terrific  grandeur  of  their  shores 
produced  only  gravity  and  sadness ;  but  there  were 
others — and  these  were  the  larger  number — who  would 
fight  over  a  drowned  corpse,  for  the  sake  of  the  purse 
belted  round  its  body,  like  wild  beasts  over  a  heap  of 
offal,  and  who  looked  on  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  the 
seas  as  their  own  right  divine,  with  which  no  living 
thing  from  the  doomed  ship  should  be  left  to  dispute  their 
title. 

And, — yet  darker  deeds  than-  these  made  their  wild 
crest  of  rock  a  name  of  terror  to  mariners.  Sometimes  it 
was  utterly  in  vain  that  the  light  of  Mary  and  her  Angels 
gleamed  in  the  high  spire  of  the  chapel.  Sometimes,  on 
the  darkest  and  dreadest  nights  of  late  autumn  and  mid- 
winter, round  a  headland  where  the  chapel  lantern 
could  not  be  discerned,  high  up  among  the  blackest  and 
steepest  cliffs,  a  tar  blaze  would  break  into  the  darkness 
and  send  forth  a  flame  that  could  be  seen  for  leagues 
across  the  waters.  So  that  any  hapless  vessel,  laboring 
in  the  trough  of  a  heavy  sea,  beholding  the  false  .signal,  and 
by  evil  fortune  mistaking  it  for  that  of  the  Church,  came 
straightway  to  her  ruin,  and  was  dashed  keel  foremost  on 
the  pointed  submerged  rocks,  and  impaled  upon  them ; 
and  never  again  saw  the  light  of  daybreak  steal  over  the 
seas. 

Those  who  lit  that  beacon  of  murder  were  never 
brought  to  justice  ;  safe  in  their  caverns  and  defiles,  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         313 

assassins  crept  safety,  by  subterranean  ways,  back  to 
their  hamlet  and  amid  their  people.  It  had  been  safer 
to  thrust  a  hand  into  a  hornet's  nest  than  to  follow 
and  arraign  them  there.  Even  their  comrades  did  not 
rightly  know  who  did  the  work.  It  was  only  when  some 
rarer  jewel  than  common  glittered  in  some  fisherman's 
ear,  or  some  richer-hued  scarf  was  wound  about  the  hips 
of  his  mistress,  that  the  rest  whispered  together,  half  en- 
vious, half  abhorrent,  that  he  must  be  one  of  those  who 
final  the  flame. 

In  the  beginning  of  one  winter  food  was  very  scarce  in 
this  sca-den.  The  fisheries  had  brought  little  in  ;  the 
weather  had  been  calm  though  dull;  there  had  been  no 
wrecks;  and  though  it  was  known  in  the  hamlet  that  the 
death-beacon  had  thrice  been  lighted  aloft,  it  had  failed 
to  lead  any  ship  astray.  They  became  fearf ally  impover- 
ished; famine  visited  them;  and  the  men  were  forced  to 
bite  the  salt  twine  of  their  nets  in  their  longing  to 
devour  something,  and  the  children  wasted  to  skeletons, 
and  died,  and  were  thrust  hastily  away  into  holes  in  the 
sand. 

A  horrible  longing  for  the  signs  of  the  storms  came  on 
them.  A  murderous  prayer  for  the  rage  of  wind  and 
water  often  rose  to  their  tongues — a  prayer  reckless  and 

godless. 

At  this  season  one  of  the  wreckers,  he  whose  brain  and 
who.-e  hand  had  first  devised  this  thing,  stole  up  one  mid- 
night through  the  crooked  crevice,  on  t  he  hare  stone  of  the 
cliff,  that  served  him  as  a  stairway.  His  torch  was  in  his 
hand,  and  his  soul  was  set  on  murder.  There  were  bitter 
north  winds  driviDg  over  the  ocean;  (here  were  gray 
fogs  and  starless  skies  ;  there  was  a  single  ship  striving 
heavily  through  a  churning  sea.  It  was  a  lair  chance,  as 
he  muttered  to  himself. 

In  his  shingle  hut,  in  the  village  yonder,  no  fresh  food 
had  touched  iho  lips,  lor  month s,  of  a  woman  whom  he 
loved.  The  leather}  >kin  of  some  salted  6sh  had  become 
too  great  a  luxury  for  them  to  obtain;  she  had  been 
driven  to  chew  the  broad  ribbon  of  the  seaweeds,  mid 
grind  the  fishbones  into  the  likeness  of  flour  to  make 
bread  :  and  never  made  murmur  or  moan  at  her  privation, 

27 


SU  TRICOTRIN, 

but  only  showed  the  gnawing  of  famine  by  the  wolfish 
glance  of  her  eyes  and  the  drawn  lines  of  her  mouth. 

There  rode  the  ship, — doomed,  surely,  to  perish,  if  lured 
here  by  the  light.  The  rocks,  sharp  as  needles,  hard  as 
iron,  over  which  the  sullen  waters  floated,  would  do  his 
work  for  him  unerringly.  Refuse,  that  to  him  would  be 
treasures,  would  be  swept  up  on  the  in-flowing  tide. 
Food,  fuel,  most  likely  raiment,  possibly  gold,  would  be 
hurled  up  on  the  foam :  human  creatures,  too,  dying  or 
dead,  who  would,  in  the  mad  clinging  of  men  to  the  riches 
that  they  cannot  take  with  them  beyond  the  grave,  have 
bound  about  them  some  belt  of  value  or  some  bag  of  coin. 
There  would  be  wherewithal  to  eat,  and  to  drink,  and  to 
be  clothed  in  his  darksome  and  desolate  cabin.  What 
matter  a  death  wail  the  more  on  the  wind  ?  What  matter 
the  ship  sinking  an  hour  soon,  or  an  hour  late,  to  her 
doom  ? 

Ere  now  he  had  thrust  back  a  shivering,  striving  frame 
into  the  blinding  spray,  from  which  it  had  well-nigh 
struggled ;  ere  now  he  had  stunned,  with  the  blow  of  his 
club,  a  girl  whose  face  had  risen  out  of  the  breakers,  with 
wide-opened  eyes  of  awful  appeal  in  the  glare  cast  upon 
it  from  the  lightning.  He  had  done  such  things  before, 
he  could  do  them  again,  for  the  sake  of  an  ounce  of  gold 
from  a  finger-ring,  of  a  necklace,  of  beads  off  a  maiden's 
throat.  Gold  would  buy  brandy,  the  hot,  strong,  blessed, 
accursed  drink  of  forgetfulness ;  and  the  necklace  would 
show  rarely  on  the  long,  stately,  brown  throat  of  his 
bona-roba.  And  in  his  fashion — tiger's  love  for  tigress — 
he  loved  the  woman  who  starved  in  his  hut  on  the  beach. 

So  he  stole  through  the  tortuous,  narrow,  cavernous 
way,  winding  upward,  steep  as  a  ladder,  cramped  as  a 
coffin,  going  higher  and  higher,  up  and  up,  into  the  bowels 
of  the  rocks  above.  And  every  now  and  then,  where  he 
went  creeping  like  a  lizard,  with  the  torch  between  his 
teeth,  he  stopped,  and  softly  blew  upon  the  flame  that 
was  dying  down  in  the  damp  and  noxious  air  of  the  chasm. 
It  was  the  spark  of  life  to  him. 

He  felt  a  latent  fear,  that  never  before  had  touched  him, 
of  setting  light  to  his  bonfire.  There  had  come  one  among 
them  who  had  set  his  face  steadfastly  against  this  evil 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         315 

trade;  who  had  sworn  that  if  the  false  beacon  blazed 
afresh  he  would  unearth  the  man  that  fed  and  Gred  it,  or 
perish  like  th<'  ships  himself;  and  these  men  of  the  west- 
ern coast  knew  that  their  visitant  would  keep  his  word. 
Therefore  the  wrecker  went  with  a  certain  terror  at  his 
heart,  drawing  himself  slowly  upward,  as  serpents  crawl, 
through  the  perpendicular  cliff  toward  his  goal  that  hung 
two  thousand  feet  and  more  above  the  level  of  the  sea. 

The  fire  was  ready  piled  there.  It  was  safe  from  all 
discovery.  None,  save  those  to  whom  the  secret  of  those 
passages  through  the  body  of  the  solid  rock  was  known, 
could  ever  attain  that  height,  which  rose,  a  sheer  straight 
wall  of  stone,  up  from  the  shore,  and  was  severed  by  deep 
abysses  on  either  side  from  the  adjacent  rocks. 

He  raised  himself  tediously  and  painfully  up  the  ascent, 
in  whose  narrowed  space  and  fetid  air  he  could  scarcely 
breathe.  His  hands  at  last  grasped  the  topmost  ledge; 
he  lifted  himself  gradually  on  to  the  highest  point,  where 
his  beacon  was  set.  The  ridge  of  all  the  other  eliffs,  lofty 
though  they  were,  sunk  far  below  him:  countless  fathoms 
downward  there  rolled  the  gray  sullen  mass  of  water. 
The  roar  of  its  waves  ascended  in  a  faint  hoarse  sound, 
and  a  dense  mist  covered  all  the  surface  of  the  sea. 

There  was  no  light  except  the  glimmer  of  the  slow 
match  that  he  bore;  no  movement  save  his  own,  except 
when  a  night-bird  flew  by  on  the  rushing  of  the  north 
wind.  He  took  sure  footsteps  on  the  jagged  uneven  peak; 
then  set  his  match  to  tin;  oil-soaked  tow  of  the  torch  that 
he  had  carried  in  the  grip  of  his  teeth. 

The  tow  caughl  and  flared  aligb.1  ;  he  lifted  his  hand  to 
fling  the  burning  flax  upon  the  piled  dry  touchwood,  and 
the  tar  barrels  of  his  beacon: — ere  he  had  ca-t  it  his  arm 
was  seized,  the  torch  was  wrenched  out  of  his  hand,  and 
thrown  flame  downward  over  the  cliffs:  a  man  closed  wit  h 
him. 

The  wrecker  was  supple  and  vigorous,  sinewy  of  frame, 
and  skilled  in  physical  exercise, — a  giant,  whose  limbs  were 
braced  by  the  strength  of  the  waves,  and  whose  nerves 
were  trained  in  the  daily  habit  of  peril:  but  he  had  met 
his  match  in  Ins  unknown  foe  who  wrestled  with  him  in 
the  blackness  uf  the  night.     Witli  tin'  quenched  (lame  of 


316  TRICOTRIN, 

the  torch  all  light  had  gone:  the  sailor  struggled  by  sheer 
instinct,  like  a  wild  beast  attacked  when  it  is  blinded,  and 
strove  to  fling  his  opponent  off  him  and  over  the  rock, 
into  the  wailing  waves  below.  The  part  on  which  they 
stood  was  narrow;  a  single  overpoise  would  have  thrown 
them  down  into  the  gulf  beneath,  locked  in  each  other's 
grasp  ;  yet  neither  thought  once  of  letting  loose  his  hold  ; 
both  struggled  for  the  mastery. 

No  word  was  uttered:  it  was  an  even  combat  of  sheer 
strength,  fought  on  that  slender,  jutting,  slippery  ledge, 
that  overhung  at  such  vast  height  the  bottomless  pit  of 
the  devouring  sea. 

Thrice  the  wrecker  all  but  gained  ascendency,  and  had 
his  arms  locked  round  his  opponent's  waist,  and  well-nigh 
lifted  him  up  from  the  stone  on  which  they  stood,  to  fling 
him  over  the  edge  to  meet  his  death.  Thrice  his  antago- 
nist resisted  him,  and  kept  his  feet  as  though  they  had 
been  rooted  into  the  rock  itself. 

It  was  a  darkness  in  which  both  were  blind  :  both  knew 
that  with  every  moment  they  might  be  hurled  down  two 
thousand  feet  of  air.  Yet  still,— neither  loosened  their 
grip  one  instant. 

The  curlews  flew  round  their  heads  with  shrill  outcry; 
the  noise  of  the  sea  boomed  louder  as  the  spring-tide 
rushed  in  ;  the  bitter  north  wind  howled  around  the  peak ; 

they  strove  together  for  dear  life  on  a  shelf  of  granite 

scarce  wider  than  a  horse's  back. 

The  sailor,  maddened  and  brutalized  by  rage  and  fear, 
at  length  made  frantic  effort  to  get  free  his  arm,  and  draw 
the  knife  at  his  belt  from  out  its  sheath  His  foe  felt  the 
movement  that  he  could  not  see.  With  swift,  keen  sci- 
ence the  foe  closed  in,  nearer  still,  with  the  wrecker  ; 
twisted  his  arm  backward  as  men  twist  a  bough  to  break 
it ;  and  seizing  him  round  the  loins  with  the  true  athlete's 
skill,  shook  him,  swayed  him,  lifted  him,  and  stretched 
him  prostrate. 

The  sailor  was  stunned :  his  head  had  struck  upon  the 
granite.  His  antagonist  stood  awhile  breathless,  ex- 
hausted, with  the  sound  of  the  winds  and  waters  surg- 
ing dully  on  his  ear,  and  the  blood  in  his  veins  beating 
like  pulses.     He  could   not  tell  whether   he  had  dealt 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         317 

death  or  no  :  till  he  stooped,  and  passed  his  hand  over 
the  motionless  body,  he  could  not  tell  whether  it  had  not 
swayed  forward  and  been  dashed  into  pieces  on  the  rocks 
below. 

The  darkness  was  impenetrable  :  even  the  white  flash 
of  a  roused  seagull's  wing  could  not  be  seen ;  he  could 
not  move  a  step  lest  he  should  out-tread  the  narrow  limits 
of  the  ledge  on  which  he  stood.  There  was  not  even  the 
ray  of  a  single  star  through  the  storm-wrack  of  the  clouds. 

He  had  no  means  of  lighting  any  of  the  touchwood 
that  lay  near;  and  if  he  had  possessed  any  could  not 
have  used  his  means,  lest  the  light  should  have  lured  the 
vessel  to  that  very  destruction  which  he  had  risked  his 
own  life  to  avert  from  her.  He  had  no  choice  but  to  rest 
where  he  was  ;  with  his  back  against  the  pile  of  the  bea- 
con-timbers, and  the  northern  blasts  raging  around  him. 

It  had  been  past  midnight  when  the  wrecker  had  gone 
forth  to  his  errand:  he  knew  that  a  few  hours  would 
bring  the  dawn. 

Therefore  he  waited,  with  the  man  who,  for  aught  he 
knew,  was  dead,  lying  at  his  feet,  and  the  hungry  sea 
fretting  and  raging  far  down  beneath,  as  though  in  fury, 
because  cheated  of  her  prey. 

The  moments  seemed  as  years,  bathed  in  that  gloom, 
knowing  that  an  unfathomable  abyss  yawned  beneath  his 
feet,  with  no  sound  but  the  thunder  of  the  wind  among 
the  cavernous  cliffs,  with  no  companion  save  a  creature 
whom  he  might  have  slain,  or  who,  if  living,  might  yet 
arise  and  fly  at  his  throat. 

As  he  stayed  there,  a  faint  spark  dropped  from  the 
torch  among  the  lighl  pine-boughs  thai  helped  to  make 
the  beacon,  blown  by  the  wind  gathered  brilliancy,  and 
increased  into  a  flame. 

The  brighl  spot  caugbl  his  eve;  with  cautious  move- 
ment he  leaned  and  caught  the  branch  thai  was  on  fire; 
ii  burned  Blowly,  bul  gave  a  dull  ruddy  glimmer,  insuffi- 
cienl  to  be  seen  by  those  a1  sea,  bul  enough  to  throw 
liii'lit  on  the  place  Immediately  around  bim. 

He  held  it  to  the  wrecker's  lace:  the  man's  eves 
changed  and  glared,  his  senses  had  revived,  though  he 

had  not  yet  power  to  move. 

27.* 


318  TRICOTRIN, 

"  It  is  you  !"  he  gasped. 

"  It  is  I, — move  a  limb,  ami  I  will  shoot  you  dead." 

The  sailor,  lying  there  half  stunned  yet,  and  dazed  by 
the  nicker  light  that  was  held  against  his  sight,  stared 
stupidly  at  the  glitter  of  the  pistol. 

"  Why  did  you  not  use  that  before  ?"  he  muttered,  half 
conscious,  half  senseless. 

"We  should  not  have  been  equal:  you  had  no  fire- 
arms." 

The  man  said  nothing :  he  looked  in  sullen  wonder  at 
the  face  above  him,  on  which  the  dim  red  gleam  shone 
faintly.  He  was  awed ;  and  filled  with  a  vague  super- 
stitious terror.  He  did  not  believe  the  foe  that  he  had 
dealt  with  could  be  mortal. 

"Can  you  rise?"  his  conqueror  asked  him. 

He  tried  to  lift  himself,  obediently :  the  fall  had  bruised 
him,  but  had  broken  no  limbs.  He  moved  his  head  with 
a  gesture  of  assent ;  his  eyes  incessantly  fastened  on  the 
steel  glisten  of  the  weapon  that  covered  him. 

"  You  can  stir ; — very  well.  Then  rise  up  and  lead 
the  way  down  your  accursed  passages.  Attempt  to  re- 
sist me, — attempt  to  escape  me, — and  I  will  send  a  bullet 
through  your  brain.  You  know  me :  you  know  that  I 
keep  my  word  : — as  I  kept  it  to-night. " 

The  wrecker  stared  at  him  with  the  same  stupid  amaze ; 
as  of  one  who  beheld  some  being  of  another  world  than 
his  own.  Then,  docilely  as  a  dog,  he  gathered  his  ach- 
ing limbs  together,  and  crept  slowly  along  the  ledge, 
down  to  the  aperture  by  which  he  had  ascended,  and 
into  the  hollow  space  that  ran  through  the  substance  of 
the  rock. 

He  dared  not  disobey;  he  essayed  neither  resistance 
nor  evasion ;  he  knew  that  the  pistol  was  leveled  at  his 
head,  and  that  its  shot  would  pierce  his  brain  if  he  at- 
tempted to  go  astray  or  to  turn  upon  his  victor. 

The  pine  branch  gave  light  enough  to  illumine  the  tor- 
tuous crevice  as  they  dragged  themselves  through  it;  he 
could  not  turn  aside  because  its  narrow  twisting  tubes 
had  no  crannies,  no  outlets,  no  hiding-places,  and  he  dared 
not  endeavor  to  outstrip  his  pursuer,  because  he  knew 
that  his  instant  death  would  be  the  penalty  of  any  attempt 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         319 

at  flight.     Once,  pausing  to  take  breath,  he  stole  a  hasty 
glance  backward. 

"  How  did  you  come  there  ?"  he  muttered  iu  his 
clinched  teeth. 

"I  scaled  the  cliff." 

"  You  could  not !  The  face  of  it  is  as  bare  as  a  man's 
hand." 

"  That  may  be ;  but  it  is  not  more  bare  or  more  steep 
than  the  wall  of  an  Alp." 

"  God  !  No  living  soul  ever  tried  it,  but  one,  and  he 
was  dashed  to  pieces  on  the  shore  below." 

"So  I  have  heard." 

"You  had  heard  that  when  you  ventured  it?" 

"Yes." 

"  And  yet  you  came  ?" 

"  To  stop  you  from  doing  fresh  murder.  That  is  words 
enough.     Pass  on." 

The  wrecker's  breath  came  hard  and  fast;  his  great 
frame  shook  slightly  with  a  tremor  as  with  cold;  he  spoke 
no  more,  but  crept  on  his  downward  way,  marveling 
greatly,  and  ashamed. 

The  way  was  long;  the  pine-branch  had  burned  down 
to  its  last  inch,  the  gray  of  the  earliest  dawn  was  break- 
ing in  the  rain-swept  stormy  skies,  when  they  emerged  at 
length  from  the  subterraneous  path,  and  came  out  upon 
the  low-lying  level  shore,  on  which  the  high  tide  <>f  the 
sea  was  breaking.  The  dawn  was  misty,  bitterly  cold, 
ushered  in  by  the  wild  north  winds,  that  drove  the  sand 
along  in  clouds,  and  hurled  the  foam  of  the  waves  in  their 
faces. 

The  sailor  turned  suddenly  on  him  as  they  came  forth 
into  the  open  air. 

"  How  did  you  tell  I  went  to  fire  that  thing  to-night?" 

"I  saw  you  take  a  slow  match  in  your  hand  as  you 
lel't  your  hut:  1  bad  often  thought  you  were  the  crimi- 
nal?*" 

The  man  hang  his  head  :  his  eyes  >\\\\  glancing  like  a 
cowed  wolf's  at  the  weapon  that  held  him  to  obedience. 

"  1  should  not  have  done  it  if  she  hail  not  beeo  starv- 
ing," he  swore  with  a  blasphemous  oath.  "  You  do  not 
know  what  famine  is  !" 


320  TRICOTRIN, 

The  gaze  that  kept  such  stern  watch  over  him  softened 
wistfully. 

"  Do  I  not  ?"  he  said  gently. 

Then  without  more  words  he  went  over  the  league's 
length  of  sand  and  stone  that  severed  them  from  the  fish- 
ing hamlet ;  driving  the  wrecker  before  him  as  a  moor- 
dog  drives  a  sheep. 

"  Where  would  you  take  me  ?"  the  man  muttered,  as 
they  drew  nigh  the  rugged  stairway  cut  out  of  the  face 
of  the  cliffs  which  led  to  the  group  of  cabins. 

"  To  your  fellows  ; — for  judgment." 

"  They  will  not  let  you  touch  me  1" 

"That  we  shall  see." 

With  a  quick  agile  movement,  before  the  fisherman 
could  resist,  or  scarce  knew  what  was  done,  he  had  seized 
his  elbows,  drawn  his  arms  behind  his  back,  and  bound 
the  wrists  tight  in  the  knots  of  a  strong  rope  he  had  car- 
ried : — the  man  was  powerless. 

"You  do  not  know  me  quite  well  yet,  Rioz,"  he  said 
quietly:  Rioz,  gnashing  his  teeth  in  baffled  fury,  and 
cursing  his  own  folly  in  letting  himself  be  netted  like  a 
lassoed  bull,  looked  at  him  with  a  look  that  through  its 
sullen  passion  had  something  of  admiration  and  of  rever- 
ence. 

"Know  you  I"  he  muttered.  "How  should  one  know 
you?     Are  you  man,  or  devil,  or  god  ?" 

"  A  little  of  all,  perhaps ;  like  everything  else  that  is 
human." 

Then  with  the  rope  in  his  left  hand,  and  the  pistol  in 
his  right,  he  forced  the  wrecker  up  on  to  the  heights  on 
which  the  cabins  of  his  people  hung. 

In  the  early  dawn  the  population — in  all  some  hundred 
souls,  not  more — were  stirring,  though  the  raw  mists  of 
the*  late  autumn  night  still  hung  over  land  and  water, 
wrapping  both  in  its  dusky  and  icy  shroud.  As  they 
were  seen,  there  was  a  rush,  a  shout,  a  tumult,  a  shrill 
outcry,  from  men's  and  women's  and  children's  voices  ; 
the  boats,  the  nets,  the  huts,  the  rude  beds  of  dried  weed 
were  all  abandoned  as  by  one  single  impulse  ;  the  little 
cluster  of  dwellings  broke  into  agitated  life,  as  a  hive  of 
bees  breaks  into  violent  movement  when  its  swarm  is 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         321 

stirred.  A  score  of  men  were  round  them  on  the  instant, 
naked  knives  flashing  in  their  hands,  yells  and  curses  on 
their  lips,  wonder  and  eagerness  and  fury  in  their  eyes. 

The  conqueror  of  Rioz  stood  unmoved  in  the  din,  hold- 
ing the  wrecker  like  a  chained  beast. 

"  This  man  is  the  assassin,"  he  said  briefly.  "  If  there 
be  any  among  you  who  would  say  fair  words  for  a  mur- 
derer, let  him  speak  them.     I  will  hear." 

The  tumult  of  the  blaspheming  and  threatening  voices 
sank  on  a  sudden  as  a  storm-wind  lulls :  hardened,  bru- 
talized, strong  in  clannish  loyalty,  and  indifferent  of 
bloodshed  as  they  were,  they  did  not  care  to  take  this 
guilt  upon  their  own  heads  thus. 

The  man  himself  never  spoke:  he  only  watched,  with 
intent  and  thirsty  eyes,  first  the  faces  of  his  comrades, 
then  the  face  of  his  "accuser.  There  was  a  dead  silence 
for  a  moment ;  then  the  force  of  tribe-love  and  the  brother- 
hood of  common  habit,  common  need,  common  peril,  got 
stronger  than  their  shame ;  they  clamored  in  unison  for 
his  release.  One  of  their  brood  should  not  be  bound,  not 
be  arraigned,  not  be  chastised;  one  of  their  race  should 
not  be  subject  to  the  laws  of  other  men.  They  were  free ; 
they  owned  no  ruler;  they  acknowledged  no  code  ;  one  of 
themselves  should  not  be  fettered  while  they  had  knives 
to  free  him.  So  they  shouted,  pressing  forward  in  the 
white  sulphurous  mist,  a  throng  of  reckless,  fearless,  free- 
born  animals,  who  owned  no  kingdom  save  the  ocean, 
and  no  master  save  the  storm-wind.  He  heard  them, 
in  peace;  knowing  nothing  more  likely  than  that  their 
knives  would  be  sheathed  in  his  own  breast,  but  never 
letting  loose  his  grasp  on  the  bound  wrists  of  his  captive. 

After  awhile  the  rage  of  words  died  down  once  more 
into  an  ominous  sullen  muttering;  in  that  instant's  pause 
he  spoke. 

"You  have  had  your  speech;  now  give  me  mine. 
Night  after  Qlght,  lor  three  winters,  a  lying  light  has 
blazed  ii]  .on  your  coast  to  lure  good  ships  to  their  destruc- 
tion. You  told  me  you  were  ignorant  of  which  among 
you  was  the  criminal.  I  believed  you.  You  are  brave 
men  ;  and  brave  men  do  not  lie.  A  blacker  sin,  one  more 
treacherous,  one  more  cowardly,  never  stained  a  human 


322  TRICOTRIN, 

life.  It  was  a  reproach  to  your  seaboard  ;  a  shame  on  your 
manhood,  that  such  a  guilt  was  harbored,  and  allowed 
to  grow,  and  thrive,  and  continue,  undetected  and  una- 
venged, among  you.  You  did  naught  in  it — whether 
from  fear,  whether  from  conspiracy,  I  leave  to  your  own 
consciences.  So  the  work  seemed  left  to  my  hand,  and  I 
did  it.  I  have  watched  many  nights;  in  vain.  To-night 
I  seized  Rioz,  red-handed  in  the  act ;  putting  his  flame  to 
that  infernal  pile.  That  his  greed  might  have  some 
miserable  spoil — some  keg  of  wine,  some  bale  of  wool, 
some  sack  of  wetted  corn,  some  case  of  rotting  fruit,  he 
was  about  to  light  the  blaze  that  would  have  brought  a 
helpless  vessel  to  her  shipwreck,  and  murdered  all  the 
human  lives  she  bore.  It  has  been  done  many  times 
ere  this:  more  deaths  than  he  could  count  lie  on  his  soul. 
For  sake  bf  some  wretched  pillage  to  sate  his  hunger  or  his 
wine  lust,  for  sake  of  some  glimmer  of  gold  to  satisfy  the 
miser's  avarice  within  him,  he  has  doomed  men  and  women 
and  children  to  death  under  your  waves.  You  can  be  brutal 
enough  ;  you  can  have  scant  pity  for  the  fleeting  life  ;  you 
can  strip  the  gold  off  a  woman's  throat  ere  yet  her  corpse 
is  cold ;  but  if  you  sanction  such  murders  as  these,  you 
are  fiends  and  not  men.  By  this  crime  you  are  all  dis- 
graced. It  is  not  enough  that  you  may  not  have  set  your 
own  match  to  the  wood,  thrown  your  own  beam  to  the 
pile.  That  this  thing. has  been  done,  and  been  pardoned, 
and  been  protected  among  you,  is  sufficient  to  brand  you 
all  with  its  infamy.  The  blood-thirst  of  Rioz  must  run 
in  your  veins,  though  his  arm  alone  had  nerve  to  raise 
the  torch  and  awake  the  fire.  There  are  noble  souls 
among  you  ;  are  they  all  dead  or  sleeping,  that  this  dis- 
grace raises  no  wrath  ?  that  this  murderer  has  lived  with 
his  sin  unvisited  in  your  midst  ?" 

They  were  silent,  touched  with  remorse,  and  burnt  with 
shame  ;  knowing  that  this  sin  had  been  harbored  among 
them,  half  in  sympathy,  half  in  desperation;  knowing 
that  they  had  been  willing  that  it  should  be  sheltered  in 
secrecy ;  knowing  that  there  were  others  in  their  com- 
munity who  had  shared  its  guilt  and  shared  its  spoils. 
They  dared  not  claim  the  murderer  again  from  the  hands 
of  his  accuser:  they  dared  not  either  denounce  the  blood- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         323 

guiltiness  from  which  their  own  souls  were  not  pure. 
They  hung  together,  stilled,  enraged,  ashamed,  uncertain 
— Rioz  looked  at  them,  and  laughed. 

"Ye  are  bold  comrades  at  need  !  Well — I  say  naught. 
It  was  an  evil  deed  :  but  I  am  willing  to  bear  its  brunt. 
It  was  my  thought  and  my  act ;  it  was  only  the  plunder 
ye  shared  !  Kill  me, — and  ye  shall,  in  justice,  kill  also 
every  man  that  ever  drank  of  my  wine  or  borrowed  my 
gold.     There  !     Will  not  that  thin  your  numbers  ?" 

The  accusation  and  the  irony,  bearing  the  sting  of 
truth  in  them,  inflamed  against  him  every  creature  of  the 
throng,  which  a  moment  before  had  been  clamorous  to 
recriver  him  from  chastisement.  They  rushed  at  him  to 
strike  their  knives  at  his  half-bare  body;  they  cried  aloud 
for  him  to  be  given  to  them ;  they  hooted  him,  and  reviled 
him,  and  demanded  that  he  should  be  theirs,  that  they 
might  cast  him  down  from  the  peak  where  his  bontire 
had  blazed  ! 

His  captor  beat  them  off,  and  flung  them  back;  and 
smiled  where  he  stood  at  bay. 

"Rioz!  I  brought  you  for  their  judgment.  You  be- 
lieved that  they  would  not  let  a  hair  of  your  head  be 
injured:  see  now  what  the  fellowship  of  guilt  is  worth! 
Will  you  have  my  judgment  or  theirs  ?" 

The  wrecker  ground  his  strong  white  teeth,  and  faced 
the  brethren  on  whose  loyalty  he  had  counted. 

"Ye  curs  !  ye  were  willing  enough  to  take  a  stoup  of 
my  rich  red  drinks  for  yourselves,  and  a  roll  of  my  bright 
silks  for  your  light-o'-loves;  ye  were  willing  enough  to 
have  barn-Is  of  rice  and  tubs  of  salted  meat  rolled  from 
the  caves  to  your  cabins,  in  the  hard  days  of  your  hun- 
ger: ye  were  willing  enough  to  have  all  that  the  beacon 
brought,  and  ye  fed  it,  and  fanned  it,  and  called  it  a  devil 
thai  w  as  better  than  a  god,  many  and  many  a  time.  And 
now  ye  are  gone  against  me:  now  ye  are  clamoring  for 
my* body,  that  ye  may  fling  it  down  on  the  rocks!  Ye 
sharks!  there  is  bul  one  man  mi  this  shore  this  dawn. 
It  is  this  man  who  has  broughl  me  rope-bound  like  a 
netted  calf.  Look  you — he  scaled  that  cliff  that  has  no 
footing  lor  a  goat,  just  to  stand  between  me  and  that 
ship  ;  he  periled  his  life  fifty  times  because  he  had  sworn 


324  TRICOTRIN, 

that  ray  bonfire  should  never  redden  the  skies  again;  he 
could  have  shot  me  and  flung  me  into  the  sea,  and  he  never 
used  his  pistol,  because  I  had  no  arms  of  that  like  about 
me.  That  was  what  he  did — Tricotrin.  And  I  say  that 
I  give  ray  life  to  him ;  and  I  will  be  judged  by  him  and 
not  by  you — ye  spawn  of  the  devil-fish,  that  will  suck  the 
dead  men's  bones  but  will  cry  out  that  ye  never  took  life  1 
He  may  throw  me  oif  the  rock,  if  he  will :  but  ye — come 
one  inch  nearer  to  me,  and,  bound  though  I  be,  I  will  find 
a  means  to  brain  the  best  among  ye !" 

They  were  men  as  bold  as  he,  and  of  like  passions ;  but 
for  once  they  hung  back  in  silence,  and  for  once>.fiieir 
knives  were  never  lifted  :  conscience  made  cowards,  of 
them. 

"Tricotrin,"  they  muttered.  "You  have  taken  him, 
you  must  deal  with  him  as  you  will." 

Tricotrin  looked  at  them  awhile,  and  answered  them 
nothing:  then  he  turned  to  the  wrecker. 

"  Follow  me,  Rioz." 

The  fisherman  followed  him  without  a  word;  he  went 
down  the  side  of  the  cliff  and  on  to  the  flat  yellow  shore. 
The  day  had  now  broken,  with  a  faint  red  flush  changing 
the  gray  of  the  sky:  in  the  tender  shadowy  light  a  single 
ship  was  gliding.  The  wild  winds  of  the  night  had  sunk 
to  silence  ;  the  sea,  though  heavy  still,  rolled  quietly;  the 
vessel  moved  unharmed  over  its  waters. 

lie  looked  at  it,  then  looked  at  Rioz  :  the  wrecker 
turned  away  with  a  shudder. 

He  was  not  altogether  vile ;  though  he  had  steeped  his 
soul  in  murder  he  had  not  burnt  out  his  conscience :  if  the 
woman  he  had  loved  had  not  hungered  he  would  not  have 
sinned. 

His  captor  let  him  stand  there  awhile,  with  his  hands 
bound  in  the  knotted  cords,  and  his  head  sunk  on  his 
breast,  and  his  eyes  afraid  to  look  upon  that  innocent 
thing,  afar  there  on  the  waters,  which,  had  his  guilt  had 
its  way,  would  now  have  been  a  shattered,  shapeless, 
sinking  mass,  with  the  billows  breaking  over  the  place  of 
its  nameless  grave. 

Then  he  spoke. 

"  Rioz — you  are  content  to  abide  by  my  judgment?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         325 

The  wrecker  gave  a  motion  of  assent. 
"  You  heard  what  jour  comrades'  sentence  would  have 
been.  They  were  willing  to  shelter  your  sin  while  it  was 
safe  in  secrecy ;  but  when  it  had  been  dragged  to  the 
light  of  day  they  would  have  cast  your  body  from  the 
rocks.  That  is  ever  the  fellowship  of  sin  ;  a  parasite 
when  the  sin  is  successful,  a  traitor  when  the  sin  is  dis- 
covered. If  they  had  been  just  men,  and  stainless,  their 
sentence  on  you  had  not  been  too  severe:  you  have 
doomed  others  to  perish,  you  could  not  deem  it  unjust  if 
you  suffered  by  the  same  death  as  your  victims.  If  there 
had  been  no  guilt  among  them  there  had  been  no  marvel 
if  they  had  cast  you  forth  from  them,  and  slain  you,  in 
loathing  and  in  vengeance.  But  they  have  not  the  right 
to  deal  thus  with  you:  their  own  hands  are  not  unsoiled, 
their  own  souls  are  not  pure.  You  have  said  that  you 
would  not  rebel  if  I  bade  you  leap  from  your  beacon- 
point  into  the  sea ;  that  is  to  speak  idly :  you  know  I  am 
not  a  murderer :  but  will  you  obey  as  passively  if  I  send 
you  to  your  rightful  due — the  galleys?" 

The  wrecker  made  no  answer.  He  did  not  lift  his  head 
from  his  breast;  but  under  his  dusky,  weather-beaten 
skin,  the  blood  came  and  went  in  rapid  flush  and  pallor, 
and  his  teeth  were  set  like  a  mastiff's. 

"  So  long  as  the  galleys  are  the  means  whereby  your 
country  visits  a  criminal  for  his  acts,  you  cannot  claim 
exemption  from  them,"  pursued  the  grave,  gentle  accents 
of  his  judge.     "For  less  than  you  have  done,  men  have 
forfeited  their  lives  upon  the  scaffold.     If  for  one  murder 
done,  in  rash  passion  or  jealous  wrath,  the  murderer  per- 
ish, how  shall  you  escape?     You  who  cannot  number 
the  creatures  that  through  you  may  have  been  stifled   in 
those  waters  !  you  who  have  doomed  the  young  with  the 
old,  the  innocent  with  the  guilty,  to  perish  by  a  hideous 
death  for  this  sake  only: — that  your  hearth  might  have 
fuel,  that  your  trencher  might  have  bread  !     [f  your  hand 
have  aever  thrust    any  struggling  body   hack  into  the 
waves — it'  3  our  steel  have  never  ended  i  he  throes  of  some 
quivering  wretch, — none  the  less  have  you  bloodguilti- 
nesa  upon  your  soul;  unredeemed  even  by  such  motive 
as  the  tyrannicide  or  the  fanatic  may  plead  for  his  crime. 

28 


326  TRICOTRIN, 

If  I  deliver  you  up  to  the  tribunal ;  if  I  take  you  to  the 
sentence  of  the  galleys  ;  if  for  all  the  rest  of  the  years 
you  shall  live  you  shall  toil  in  chains,  eat  and  drink  the 
bread  and  water  of  bitterness,  be  branded  to  every  eye 
that  looks  on  you,  labor  like  the  mill-horse  under  the 
threat  of  the  whip,  live  in  a  hell  of  foul  utterance  and 
evil  passion,  never  again  see  the  leaping  gladness  of  the 
ocean,  never  again  breast  the  winds  and  the  waves  in  all 
the  exultation  of  your  strength,  never  again  look  into  the 
eyes  or  kiss  the  mouth  of  a  woman  you  love, — tell  me, 
will  my  judgment  be  more  than  justice  ?" 

A  great  shudder  shook  the  mighty  limbs  of  the  fettered 
man. 

He  was  silent  many  moments.  Then  at  length  he  an- 
swered— the  truth,  sullen  yet  resolute. 

"No.     It  will  be  just." 

Tricotrin  looked  at  him  long  and  earnestly. 

"  Brute  and.  fiend  though  you  are,  you  have  greatness 
in  you,"  he  muttered.  "  For  you  have  courage,  and  you 
have  truth." 

The  wrecker  did  not  hear ;  his  eyes  were  fastened  on 
the  receding  ship  sailing  through  the  soft,  young  light ; 
his  thoughts  were  fastened  on  the  dull,  drear,  endless  years 
that  waited  for  him  in  the  galley-slave's  doom. 

Tricotrin  waited  awhile,  letting  this  thought  fasten  on 
and  penetrate  the  long-brutalized  conscience  of  the  man 
with  whom  he  dealt. 

"If  you  had  gone  back  from  your  word,  and  disputed 
the  fairness  of  that  doom,  I  should  have  abandoned  you 
to  it  as  a  worthless  and  hopeless  ruffian,"  he  said,  curtly. 
"  But  you  are  brave  enough,  true  enough,  to  confess  its 
justice.  There  must  be  some  core  of  honesty  in  you  yet. 
If  the  guillotine  came  down  on  your  neck,  you  would 
have  no  more  than  justice  still.  But — I  believe  that  there 
is  that  in  you  which  may  be  worth  the  saving.  The  gal- 
leys will  not  save  you  ;  they  will  only  cage  you  in,  as  a 
wild  beast  is  caged,  and  deprive  you  of  the  power  to  do 
evil.  It  is  a  hard  question, — how  to  disarm  and  punish 
crime  ;  made  so  hard  by  such  as  you,  that  we  cannot 
wonder  that  the  world's  wisdom  utterly  fails  at  solving 
it.      The  galleys  will   withhold  you  from  doing  added 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         327 

crime;  but  that  will  be  all.  They  will  make  a  sullen, 
venomous,  half-mad,  blasphemous  outcast  of  you,  with 
nil  the  will  to  do  tenfold  worse  than  you  have  done,  aud 
only  held  back  from  action  by  the  irons  on  your  ankles 
and  the  scourge  on  your  back.  If  I  see  you  a  score  years 
hence,  I  shall  see  in  you  a  man  whose  last  state  is  a  mil- 
lion times  darker  than  his  first.  You  will  be  a  tiger, 
whose  claws  are  cut  indeed,  but  whose  lusts  to  kill  are 
fiercer  than  ever.  They  will  paralyze  your  limbs,  but 
tbey  will  only  inflame  your  passions.  Well — if  you  have 
had  no  care  for  the  better  powers  that  are  in  you,  why 
should  your  rulers  have  care  ?  If  you  have  chosen  to 
strangle  the  higher  life  in  you,  why  should  they  heed 
aught  save  your  animal  instinct  to  slay  that  it  is  their 
office  to  stifle  and  prevent?  You  will  he  treated  like  a 
caged  wild-beast.  Well — why  not?  since  you  have  far 
viler  savageness  in  you  than  the  poor  beasts,  who  never 
slaughter  tJieir  kind  ?" 

Rioz  heard — with  dogged  patience. 

"  I  do  not  resist,"  he  said,  slowly.    "  It  is  right,  I  dare 
say.     And  I  said  thai  you  should  do  as  you  would."' 

Tricntrin's  eyes  filled  with  a  great  pity. 

"Do  as  I  would?  Well,  then  hear  what  it  is  I  would 
do.  It  is  this:  1  would  save  you  from  yourself.  The 
galleys  would  save  others  from  you;  but  1  would  go 
further  than  that  if  I  could.  What  lives  you  have 
wrecked  you  alone  can  tell  ;  I  know  only  that  your  false 
beacon  has  flamed  many  times,  and  would  have  broughl 
yon  ship  to  her  death-throe  to-night.  Therefore  I  know 
you — a  murderer.  In  full  intent,  if  nol  in  actual  deed. 
There  can  be  qo  plea,  no  palliation,  for  the  vileness  of 
your  guilt.  Viler,  I  think,  there  cannot  be  upon  earth. 
Bui  even  for  your  deeds  there  can  be  atonement;  even 
for  your  ollcnses  there  can  be  expiation.  One  life  saved 
\>\  you  from  those  waters  will  be  better  amend  for  your 
crime  than  twenty  years  spent  al  the  galleys.  The  gal- 
leys would  simply  waste  your  life,  and  render  it  power- 
less for  evil.  1  would  employ  your  life,  and  render  it 
powerful  for  good.  There  is  truth  in  you,  and  courage. 
They  must  be  lit  for  other  things  than  murder  and  pil- 
lage.    Therefore,  I  will  not  drive  you  out  to  the  doom 


328  TRICOTRIN, 

that  bylaw  would  await  you.  I  will  sentence  you  other- 
wise ;  if  you  have  the  force  in  you  I  think,  you  will  bear 
it ;  if  not,  you  must  carry  the  galley-chain.  You  will 
live  alone  on  that  rock  where  your  fire  has  blazed ;  you 
will  hold  no  communion  with  your  fellows;  you  will 
subsist  as  you  may  on  the  bare  food  you  can  glean  from 
the  shore  and  the  sea ;  you  are  a  strong  swimmer,  a  bold 
sailor,  you  will  do  your  uttermost  to  succor  and  to  save 
all  life  that  comes  in  peril  off  your  headland.  I  give 
you — solitude,  hardship,  travail,  atonement.  Being  of  a 
brave  temper,  you  will  not  flinch  from  the  working  out  of 
your  doom.     Go, — you  are  free. " 

And  he  severed  the  cords  that  bound  the  wrecker's 
strong  wrists  together. 

Rioz  had  lifted  his  head,  and  looked  him  hard  in  the 
eyes,  as  his  condemnation  was  uttered.  As  the  rope  fell 
from  his  arms  and  left  him  at  liberty,  a  great  change 
passed  over  his  face  ;  its  savage  gloom  passed  away,  its 
wolfish  glance  softened  and  lightened. 

"  You  trust  me  ?"  he  muttered.  "  You  shall  see,  then, 
— I  will  do  your  bidding.  It  is  bitter;  yet  it  is  just.  I 
may  go  mad  on  that  rock  ;  it  is  like  enough.  Loneliness 
kills  men's  brain,  they  say.  But  while  I  have  sense  I 
will  be  true  to  you.  And  you  are  merciful,  too — you 
leave  me  the  sea,  and  the  wind,  and  the  air." 

His  voice  died  in  his  throat ;  he  turned  away  to  go 
out  to  his  doom. 

But  the  man  who  had  judged  him  followed  him,  and 
laid  his  hand  on  his  shoulder  gently,  yet  with  firm  and 
tenacious  touch. 

"Nay — I  give  you  not  utter  solitude.  That  were  to 
be  more  brutal  than  the  galleys.  Nor  will  I  leave  you  to 
work  out  my  sentence  unaided.  We  will  dwell  on  that 
rock  together." 

Rioz  stared  blankly  at  him,  with  glazed,  burning  eyes 
wide  open. 

"  You  ! — you  !  You  have  done  no  evil  ?  Why  should 
you  care  whether  I  drown,  or  rot,  or  go  mad  ?  Why 
should  you  suffer  to  save  me?" 

Tricotrin  smiled ;  the  smile  was  weary,  and  more  sad 
than  tears. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  329 

"Chut!  When  you  have  famine,  you  cure  it  in  oue 
fashion  ;  when  I  have  famine,  I  cure  it  iu  another.  There 
are  two  treasures  we  may  both  find  on  that  bleak,  wind- 
beaten  headland — yours  expiation,  and  mine  peace." 

And  for  three  long  years  he  dwelt  there — sole  compan- 
ion of  an  assassin.  There  were  many  lives  that  he  saved 
from  the  pitiless  "waters  ;  but  there  was  one  life  that  he 
saved  from  a  deeper  abyss  than  the  lowest  depths  of  the 
ocean. 

It  was  thus  that  he  dealt  with  the  sorrow  within  him. 
It  was  thus  that  he  wrenched  the  iron  from  out  his  own 
soul,  by  wringing  the  blackness  of  guilt  from  the  soul  of 
another. 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

In  midwinter  all  Paris  was  dancing. 

Paris  dances  as  nothing  else  can  under  the  sun  or  the 
stars.  Did  she  not  dance  when  her  stones  ran  blood ; 
dance  when  dynasties  fell  at  her  word  ;  dance  on  the  icy 
glacis  of  Breda ;  dance  while  the  steel  cut  down  through 
her  loftiest  throats  ;  dance  when  the  bastard  son  of  Louis 
Quinze  drowned  with  the  roll  of  his  drums  the  dying 
words  of  Louis  Seize?  Paris  dances  ever:  beautiful, 
terrible  thing,  half  child,  half  wanton,  twin  angel  and 
assassinatress  that  she  is;  dances  on  under  the  million 
lights  of  her  winter-nights  as  under  the  glorious  suns  of 
her  Bummer-eves,  under  the  fetters  of  tyrannies  as  under 
the  banners  of  freedom. 

They  danced  in  the  palaces,  they  danced  in  the  man- 
sions, they  danced  in  every  hall,  and  coffee-room,  and 
concerl  place,  and  singing-booth,  and  covered  garden,  in 
this  winter-time.  In  every  spot  feet  flew,  like  autumn 
leaves  blown  by  wild  breezes;  and  laughter  echoed  like 
the  chimes  of  sleigh-bells;  and  men  and  women  went 
mad  with  the  joyous  delirium  of  motion.     Specially  they 

28* 


330  TRICOTRIN, 

danced  in  an  abandonment  of  revelry  in  the  great  hall  of  the 
Elysee  Montmartre ;  grisettes,  and  students,  and  fruit- 
girls,  and  working  men,  and  all  that  was  maddest  and 
brightest  of  the  labor-world  and  the  student-world  of 
Paris.  They  lost  all  sense  save  that  one  sense  of  the 
hot,  intoxicated  delight  of  boundless,  leaping,  whirling, 
spinning,  unceasing  motion;  like  the  whirlwind  in  its 
speed,  like  brandy  in  its  strength,  like  tigers'  frolic  in  its 
play.  They  danced  as  not  even  in  Paris  that  night  did 
any  dance  elsewhere.  For  above  the  noise  of  the  hired 
bands,  which,  indeed,  did  sink  hushed  and  abashed  in  ri- 
valry by  it,  was  the  music  that  Paris  loved  best,  the 
music  that  had  in  its  marvelous  melody  all  the  color  of  a 
Titian,  all  the  glow  of  strong  wine,  all  the  rush  of  a 
swift-running  river,  all  the  revelry  of  a  royal  carousal. 
One  played  for  them  who  would  not  play  at  the  bidding 
of  monarchs;  but  who  cast  out,  to  those  who  had  not 
gold  to  purchase  pleasure,  the  lavish  treasures  of  his 
genius. 

That  music  could  do  with  tbem  -as  it  would ;  and  now 
it  bade  them  dance  on  through  the  long  winter's  night, 
and  forget  that  cold,  and  pain,  and  hunger,  and  toil  and 
envy  were  their  daily  portions  in  the  world  that  was 
white  with  its  new  year's  virginal  snows. 

The  player  laughed  oftentimes  as  he  played,  with  rich 
gay  laughter  ;  but  oftener  still  there  came  the  look  in  his 
eyes  as  of  the  dreamy  deep  meditation,  the  awed  surprise 
and  yet  serenity  of  one  who  beholds  visions  that  none 
around  him  see.  His  face  was  the  face  of  a  poet ;  and  it 
had  but  more  fire,  more  force,  more  beauty  for  the  silver- 
white  waves  of  the  abundant  hair,  dashed  back  like  a  lion's 
mane.  Hour  after  hour  the  music  pealed  out,  untiring, 
exhaustless ;  music  for  which  kings  would  have  rained 
down  their  wealth,  for  which  these  dancers  of  the  popu- 
lace could  only  give  their  love.  But  this  one  gift  they 
gave  in  lavish  measure  ;  and  when  at  length  the  melo- 
dies ceased,  the  vast  crowd  pausing,  shouted  as  with  one 
throat  such  a  cheer  as  years  before  had  rung  out  for  the 
great  and  beloved  tribune  of  the  people,  when  Gabriel 
Mirabeau  had  paused  among  them. 

Such  welcome,  the  cannon  of  royal  entries,  the  troops 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  331 

of  Imperial  guard,  the  magnetized  fear  of  a  subject  nation, 
cannot  give,  though  trumpets  call,  and  drums  roll,  and 
artillery  thunder  from  dawn  till  sunset. 

He  could  have  led  them  where  he  would — these  bright, 
wild,  tender,  ferocious  children  of  Paris,  so  idolatrous  in 
worship,  so  merciless  in  hate.  He  could  have  led  them 
where  he  would,  to  hurl  down  the  gates  of  palaces,  to 
dash  aside  the  serried  ranks  of  guards,  to  scatter  princes 
as  chaff  before  the  winds,  to  steep  new-born  liberties  in  a 
fell  baptism  of  blood. 

They  tossed  flowers  high  in  the  air ;  they  flung  up  their 
arms  in  the  bright  light ;  they  thronged  about  with  pas- 
sionate eagerness ;  the  breasts  of  the  women  heaved  like 
waves  under  a  storm,  the  brows  of  the  men  burned  red 
with  the  fires  of  freedom  struck  alight  by  his  art  in  their 
souls.  He  looked  down  on  their  upturned  faces  and  on 
their  breathless,  tumultuous  homage,  and  smiled; — the 
smile  whose  meaning  lay  far  beyond  them. 

"My  children!  No  gratitude  between  us.  Is  there 
not  love  ?" 

Tricotrin — bohemian  and  wanderer,  nameless  and 
homeless  among  men — 5had  a  kingdom  greater  than 
monarchs  held,  a  power  greater  than  the  scepter  can 
command. 

Through  the  bitter  brilliant  wintry  night  he  walked, 
later  on,  straightly  and  swiftly,  with  the  free  long  step  of 
a  forest  animal,  along  the  chill  snow-covered  streets  of. 
Paris.  As  he  went  he  sang,  in  a  voice  that  rang  through 
tin  stillness,  and  made  the  sullen  frozen  patrol  listen,  with 
a  smile  on  his  face,  to  that  joyous,  drinking,  ami  amorous 
carol,  "Sar  deux  levres  roses:" 

"  I  unlearn  all  my  Latin 
On  two  red  lips  of  satin, 

Ami  study  nighi  ami  morning,  * 

All  other  science  Booming, 
The  art  of  those  twin  roses  ! 

High  in  air  t lie  sky-lark  sings, 
As  to  me  a  maiden  brings 
Fruit  ripe  as  her  breast  is  white, 
Ami  wine  that  is  full  of  light, 
'And  red  as  her  cheek's  roses ! 


332  TRICOTRIN, 

»• 

No  chair  of  state  can  lure  me, 
No  classic  bribe  insure  me, 
But  all  the  lore  of  ages 
I  gleam  from  those  sweet  pages, 
Of  Love's  own  leaves  of  roses  !" 

The  snow  was  falling  heavily,  and  was  deep  upon 
the  earth  :  he  went  through  it,  and  over  it,  with  a  step 
firm  as  a  soldier's,  light  and  free  as  a  gipsy's.  An  old 
man  dragging  himself  wearily  and  painfully  along,  shiv- 
ering, glanced  wistfully  at  his  lighted  meerschaum.  He 
stopped,  pulled  a  knot  of  tobacco  and  a  pipe  from  his 
pocket,  filled  the  bowl  and  lit  it ;  then  gave  it  to  the  aged 
creature. 

"  Smoke  and  forget,  my  friend  !  The  pipe  is  our  best 
comrade  after  death  1" — then  he  went  on  chanting  his 
rose-song. 

A  little  child  lay  curled  on  a  doorstep,  blue,  numb, 
almost  frozen,  quite  heart-broken,  sobbing  himself  into  a 
fatal  slumber.  Tricotrin  paused  again,  lifted  up  the  boy, 
and  shook  him  from  his  trance :  in  the  little,  weary, 
whitened  face  there  were  exceeding  innocence  and  grief. 

"  Have  you  no  home  ?" 

"No." 

"  No  mother?" 

"No." 

"  How  old  are  you?" 

"Six,  I  think." 

"  And  all  alone  ?" 

"All  alone." 

"Not  of  Paris?" 

"  No.  My  father  came  from  the  west — very  far  away, 
— to  get  work ;  and  there  was  none  :  they  are  ceasing  to 
build,  they  say.  So  we  starved  ;  and  my  father  killed  him- 
self.    He  is  in  that  terrible  black  house  by  the  river " 

"And  has  left  you  and  Paris  a  legacy  to  one  another? 
Scarcely  fair ;  since  without  him  you  would  have  re- 
mained in  the  peaceful  regions  of  the  Unarrived  :  and 
disembodied  souls  neither  want  bread  nor  get  blue  with 
cold.  Well !  you  see  that  passage,  and  the  door  under 
the  third  lamp  ?  Run  quick  there  ;  ask  for  the  woman 
of  the  house.    Tell  her  that  Tricotrin  has  sent  you  :  that 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         333 

you  are  to  sleep  on  his  bed,  be  warmed  at  his  fire,  have 
some  milk  and  some  bread,  and  forget  yourself  in  dream- 
land till  the  morning.  Then — well  then  we  will  see  what 
substitute  we  can  discover  for  this  impolite  father  of 
yours,  who  sent  you  into  this  best  of  all  possible  worlds 
and  never  had  the  decent  complaisancy  to  secure  you  a 
crust  in  it.     Off,  little  one — quick!" 

The  child  stared  up  at  him  through  the  falling  snow 
with  wide-opened  wondering  eyes,  thinking  of  the  figures 
of  the  angels  Gabriel  and  Michael  that  he  had  seen  in 
churches,  and  marveling  which  of  the  twain  this  was 
thai  now  had  mercy  on  him  in  this  bleak  and  brutal  night. 
Then, — remembering  him  of  the  milk  and  bread  of  which 
this  grand  and  pitiful  angel  had  spoken,  and  moved  by 
his  famished  desolate  heart, — he  looked  up  once  swiftly, 
half  afraid,  then  threw  his  arms  about  his  benefactor's 
knees  and  covered  his  feet  with  kisses.  Tricotrin  shook 
him  softly  away. 

"  Chut !  I  am  no  god — only  a  stray  thing  like  your- 
self. Go  quick  1  you  want  the  bread  and  milk,  and  the 
wood  fire." 

The  child  ran,  with  fresh  life  put  in  his  chilled  starved 
limbs:  Tricotrin  went  on,  singing  his  drinking-song. 

A  little  way  farther  down  the  street  there  sat  a  small,, 
brown,  shaggy,  shivering  dog,  of  no  value,  of  no  beauty, 
shaking  all  over  with  the  cold  and  howling  piteously. 
He  paused  once  more,  and  stroked  it,  and  talked  awhile 
to  it,  and  its  grief  fell  into  a  lower  key,  and  became  a 
plaintive  sighing  sound.  Its  bones  were  almost  through 
its  skin,  its  eyes  were  bleared  and  blind,  its  misery  was 
great. 

"  Get  out,  you  moaning  brute  !"  cried  a  woman  from  a 
garret-lattice  above,  as  she  thrust  her  head  into  the  dark- 
ness and  aimed  at  the  little  dog  a  heavy  billet  of  w 1. 

Tricotrin  caughl  the  wood  as  it  came,  and  saved  the 
cur  the  blow. 

"Friend,"  he  said,  quietly  glancing  up,  "  if  you  had 
sent  the  famished  thing  a  piece  of  a  loaf,  it  had  been 
Softer  to  his  Stomach  and  to  my  hand  '."' 

The  woman  peeped  at  him  by  the  faint  gas  gleam. 

"Is  it  you,  Tricotrin?"   she  said,  half  sullenly,  half 


334  TRICOTRIN, 

ashamed.     "I  would  not  grudge  the  mongrel  a  bone; 
but  it  is  such  a  wretched  beast  to  howl.     Look  you :  it 
belonged  to  a  young  man  that  lived  here  ;  a  fool  who  was 
forever  scribbling  over  every  scrap  of   paper  he    could 
find,   and  thinking  he  was  born  to   be   a   poet — God's 
mercy !     Well — he  could  not  buy  a  leek  for  his  soup  at 
last,  and  he  had  no  shirts  but  the  one  he  had  on,  and  he 
could  do  nothing  but  scribble,  scribble,  scribble.     So  the 
other  day  we  had  to  break  his  door  open,  and  we  found 
him  stark  and  stiff  on  the  mattress, — there  was  a  char- 
coal pan  just  burned  out,  and  all  his  poems  were  a  little 
heap  of  rent  paper.    Now  that  cur  you  see  there  belonged 
to  him :  and  drive  it  away  how  we  will,  it  always  comes 
back,  and  sits  under  his  wiudow,  and  howls  like  that. 
Who  is  to  bear  such  a  noise  ?  It  will  not  go  away.    And 
who  is  to  feed  it,  a  thing  worth  nothing  ?     I  will  have  it 
flung  in  the  river,  or  sell  it  to  a  student  to  cut  up  with 
his  dissecting  knife." 

Tricotrin  took  the  little  animal  up  in  his  arms,  and 
stroked  afresh  the  matted  broken  hair. 

"  Fidelity  pays  thee  ill,  poor  little  wretch !"  he  mur- 
mured.    "  Ah  !  thou  art  not  alone  !" 

"  You  have  none  of  that  dead  lad's  writings  ?"  he  asked 
tiloud. 

"  Not  I,"  the  woman  answered  from  above.  "  He  had 
torn  them  to  bits,  I  tell  you.  There  was  one  roll  indeed, 
one  on  which  he  had  writ  that  he  had  not  had  the  courage 
to  destroy  it — he  believed  it  would  make  his  name  live, 
though  his  body  had  been  killed  by  hunger.  But  I  burnt 
it  in  my  stove  as  soon  as  I  could  :  how  could  I  tell  it  was 
not  what  would  get  me  into  trouble  with  the  police  ?" 

She  shut  her  lattice  sharply,  unwilling  to  squander 
more  time  and  more  words  on  such  poor  things  as  a 
mongrel  dog  and  a  dead  poet.  Tricotrin  again  went  on 
his  way  with  the  little  shivering  beast  in  the  folds  of  his 
loose  fur  coat.  It  had  ceased  to  moan,  and  was  trying 
to  lick  his  hand. 

"  So  !"  he  murmured,  half  aloud.  "  The  creature  that 
thrusts  the  boy-poet's  trust  into  her  stove  for  fuel  is  called 
the  immortal  being,  and  you,  who  have  a  tenderer  memory 
and  a  loyaler  love  than  one  woman  in  ten  thousand,  get 


TUB  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         335 

kicked  aside  as  a  cur !     How  enormous  is  the  vanity  of 
humanity  !    The  river  or  the  dissecting  knife — that  is  the 
only  choice  they  give  you.     Little  fool  1  you  elected  to 
love  a  man  who  had  only  intelligence,  no  gold;    you 
elected  to  serve  a  life  that  had  only  high  hopes,  no  prac- 
tical pelf;  you  fastened  your  heart  on  a  creature  who 
knew  the  world  so  little  that  he  fancied  the  legacy  of  a 
dream  would  be  treasured  like  the  legacy  of  a  fortune  : 
few  women  are  so  unwise  as  you  were,  my  dog.     And 
now,  because  you  are  a  mongrel  you  are  beaten  ;  because 
you  are  faithful  you  are  cursed;  because  you  are  only  a 
thin,  rough,  ugly,  hapless  morsel,  with  a  noble  heart 
beating  iu  your  little  hairy  breast,  and  an  immeasurable 
love  consuming  you,  you  are  to  be  flung  into  the  water 
with  a  stone  round  your  neck,  or  quiver,  and  thrill,  and 
gasp  in  torture,  under  the  brutality  men  call  Science! 
What  magnificent  justice  we  have  1     What  appreciation 
of  fidelity  !    Well — you  shall  come  and  have  a  share  with 
Mistigri :  and  by-and-by  when  the  chill  of  the  winter  has 
passed,  you  shall  go  into  the  green  country  places,  and 
live  on  a  Normandy  farm  that  I  know  of,  and  blink  your 
eyes  all  day  in  the  sun,  and  roll  in  the  long  sweet  gras&, 
and  sleep  under  the  apple-tree  boughs.     If  your  master 
was  really  a  poet,  it  must  have  been  an  added  pain  to 
him  to  think  that  he  left  you  alone.     Had  he  the  divine 
afflatus,  really,  in  him?     Surely  not,  or  he  had  never  left 
a  little  desolate  thing  like  you  to  starve  and  to  pine  in  the 
streets.     And  yet — I  do  not  know — poets  are  but  men, 
men  a  little  nearer  to  God  and  the  Truth  than  are  other.-; 
and   when   hunger  is  keen,  and  the  world  is  cruel,  the 
truth  gets  obscured  to  their  sight,  and  they  say  thai  (Jod 
is  dead  also — since  he  will  not  hear  or  give  answer!" 

The  little  dog  oestled  closer,  comforted;  and  Tricotrin 
passed  on  through  the  network  of  the  streets. 

Ere  long  he  drew  near  one  which,  in  the  late  night, 
was  still  partially  Idled  wii  h  vehicles  and  with  foot-pas- 
sengers,  hurrying  through  the  now  fast-falling  .--now.  mid 
over  the  slippery  icy  pavements.  In  one  spot  a  crowd 
had  gathered;  of  artisans,  women,  Boldiers,  and  idlers, 
under  the  light  of  a  gas-lamp.  In  the  midst  of  the  throng 
some  gendarmes  had  seized  a  young  girl,  accused  by  one 


336  TRICOTRIN, 

of  the  by-standers  of  having  stolen  a  broad  silver  piece 
from  his  pocket. 

She  offered  no  resistance ;  she  stood  like  a  stricken 
thing,  speechless  and  motionless,  as  the  men  roughly  laid 
hands  on  her. 

Tricotrin  crossed  over  the  road,  and  with  difficulty 
made  his  way  into  the  throng  of  blouses  and  looked  at 
her.  Degraded  she  was ;  but  scarcely  above  a  child's 
years ;  and  her  features  had  a  look  as  if  innocence  were 
in  some  sort  still  there,  and  sin  still  loathed  in  her  soul. 
As  he  drew  near  he  heard  her  mutter, — 

"Mother,  mother!  She  will  die  of  hunger! — it  was 
for  her,  only  for  her  !" 

He  stooped  in  the  snow,  and  letting  fall,  unperceived, 
a  five-frank  piece,  picked  it  up  again. 

"  Here  is  some  silver,"  he  said,  turning  to  the  infuriated 
owner,  a  lemonade  seller,  who  could  ill  afford  to  lose  it 
now  that  it  was  winter,  and  people  were  too  cold  for 
lemonade,  and  who  seized  it  with  rapturous  delight. 

"  That  is  it,  monsieur,  that  is  it.  Holy  Jesus !  how  can 
I  thank  you  ?  Ah,  if  I  had  convicted  the  poor  creature — 
and  all  in  error  ! — I  should  never  have  forgiven  myself! 
Messieurs  les  gendarmes,  let  her  go  !  It  was  my  mis- 
take.    My  silver  piece  was  in  the  snow !" 

The  gendarmes  reluctantly  let  quit  their  prey:  they 
muttered,  they  hesitated,  they  gripped  her  arms  tighter, 
and  murmured  of  the  prison-cell. 

"Let  her  go,"  said  Tricotrin,  quietly:  and  in  a  little 
while  they  did  so, — the  girl  stood  bareheaded  and  motion- 
less in  the  snow,  like  a  frost-bound  creature. 

Soon  the  crowd  dispersed  :  nothing  can  be  still  long  in 
Paris,  and  since  there  had  been  no  theft  there  was  no 
interest:  they  were  soon  left  almost  alone,  none  were 
within  hearing. 

Then  he  stooped  to  her :  she  had  never  taken  off  him 
the  wild,  senseless,  incredulous  gaze  of  her  great  eyes. 

"  Were  you  guilty  ?"  he  asked  her. 

She  caught  his  hands,  she  tried  to  bless  him  and  to 
thank  him,  and  broke  down  in  hysterical  sobs. 

"  I  took  it — yes  !  What  would  you  have  ?  I  took  it 
for  my  mother.     She  is  old,  and  blind,  and  without  food. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         337 

[t  is  for  her  that  I  came  on  the  streets:  but  she  does  not 
know,  it  would  kill  her  to  know  ;  she  thinks  my  money 
honest ;  and  she  is  so  proud  and  glad  with  it !  That  was 
the  first  thing  I  stole !  Oh  God !  are  you  an  angel  ? 
If  they  had  put  me  in  prison  my  mother  would  have 
starved!" 

He  looked  on  her  gently,  and  with  a  pity  that  fell  upon 
her  heart  like  balm. 

"  I  saw  it  was  your  first  theft.  Hardened  robbers  do 
not  wear  your  stricken  face,"  he  said  softly,  as  he  slipped 
two  coins  into  her  hand.  "Ah,  child!  let  your  mother 
die  rather  than  allow  her  to  eat  the  bread  of  your  dis- 
honor: which  choice  between  the  twain  do  you  not  think 
a  mother  would  make  ?  And  know  your  trade  she  must, 
soon  or  late.  Sin  no  more,  were  it  only  for  that  love  you 
bear  her." 

Then  he  passed  from  her  swiftly,  chanting  still  the 
burden  of  the  roses. 

The  girl-criminal,  the  child-courtesan  of  sixteen  sum- 
mers, stood  mute  and  paralyzed  ;  her  hand  mechanically 
closing  on  the  gold  ;  her  large  dark  heavy  eyes  gazed 
over  the  white  stretches  of  the  snow,  and  up  at  the  black 
star-studded  skies:  hot  tears  rushed  under  her  swollen 
lids,  and  she  flung  up  her  arms  to  the  heavens  with  a  sob 
that  was  prayer  and  oath  in  one. 

He  had  ransomed  her  from  more  than  the  prison  cell : 
he  had  bought  her  soul  from  sin. 

And  the  joyous  amorous  song  rang  gayly  through  the 
night;  for  these  were  daily  things  that  he  did,  ami  were 
nnthing  new  in  his  life,  which,  if  like  the  life  of  Desaugiers 
it  was  <>ne  perpetual  fete,  was  also  one  continual  benedic- 
tion. Turn  by  turn,  his  life  had  been  full  of  mirth,  and 
passion,  ami  poetry,  .mil  revelry,  and  pain,  and  all  the  de- 
lights of  the  senses  and  the  soul  in  changeful  sequence; 
but  in  it  one  thing  reigned  ever,  never  sleeping,  never 
shallowed,  never  silent,  never  cold,  a,  thing  of  which  men 
have  little,  ami  saints  have  less, — charity. 

r>\-and-l>v.  through  the  streets  of  theold  city  ami  across 
the  river,  lie  came  to  where  the  ureal  front  of  the  Tuilo- 
ries  glittered  all  alive  with  light. 

"Ah!     1   remember    they  are  dancing   here  too,"  he 

29 


338  TRICOTRIN, 

murmured,  as  he  glanced  at  the  illumined  palace.  "  So 
there  is  the  eldest  son  of  the  church  spending  half  a  mil- 
lion to  entertain  the  princes  of  the  earth,  while  out  in  the 
street  yonder  filial  piety  must  turn  harlot  to  get  a  crust ! 
Sublime  crown  of  civilization!" 

And  he  walked  through  the  Carousel  to  the  Court  of 
Honor. 

"  No  one  passes,"  said  one  of  the  Cent  Gardes,  bringing 
his  bayonet  level,  while  his  sky-blue  and  silver  harness 
glittered  in  the  gaslight. 

"  Bah!  I  pass;  you  know  me,  Petit  Jean." 

The  guard  looked,  smiled,  and  let  him  enter.  He  knew 
that  Tricotrin  was  privileged,  by  right  of  that  love  which 
the  people  openly  bore  him,  and  the  fear  which  their  rulers 
secretly  felt  of  him. 

He  stood  in  the  entrance  among  the  fretting  horses, 
shouting  lackeys,  flaring  torches:  they  filled  the  vast 
court  with  movement  and  with  color,  while  above-head 
the  heavy  snow  whitened  the  roofs  of  palace,  pavilion, 
and  gallery. 

The  guests  of  the  court  were  then  leaving  in  the  gray 
of  night  that  met  morning:  hundreds  passed  by  him,  wo- 
men of  beauty  and  birth,  and  men  of  every  nation's  nobil- 
ity, the  brilliant  throng  of  a  new-year  ball,  passing  out  to 
their  equipages  in  the  red  tossing  flamelight  of  ten  thou- 
sand torches. 

Among  them  came  one  whose  loveliness  had  had  no 
peer  even  among  all  that  was  loveliest  in  Europe  : — a  wo- 
man of  a  perfect  beauty,  moving  with  slow  sweeping  step; 
a  woman  of  lofty  slender  stature,  like  a  palm ;  of  voluptu- 
ous and  exquisite  grace ;  with  eyes  dark  as  night,  full  of 
languor  and  luster,  and  a  skin  like  the  snow,  and  hair  of 
lightest  gold,  in  which  stars  of  diamonds  shone ;  a  woman 
with  the  dignity  of  an  empress,  the  glance  of  a  sorceress, 
the  face  of  an  angel. 

And  the  running  footmen,  with  their  torches  blazing, 
cleared  a  wide  way  before  her,  and  called  aloud  for  the 
carriage  of, — "  Madame  la  Duchesse  de  Lira." 

He,  standing  there  beyond  the  torch-glare,  started  and 
went  forward,  the  blood  flushing  his  forehead,  his  eyes 
lighting  to  eager  passion. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         339 

Once  this  beautiful  sovereign  had  said,  "  If  I  forget 
you  then  may  God  forget  me  ;" — now  her  careless  impe- 
rial glance  sweeping  over  the  throng  passed  over  him  and 
did  not  even  see  him. 

His  head  dropped  as  if  he  had  been  struck  a  sharp 
blow  ;  a  keen  anguish,  like  the  anguish  in  the  bold  faith- 
ful eyes  of  a  hound  wounded  by  the  hand  that  it  loves, 
came  into  his :  not  without  need  and  prescience  had  he 
once  answered  her, — "thy  sins  to  me  I  shall  forgive 
thee  :  for  what  else  have  I  given  thee  love  ?" 

The  carriage  rolled  away  with  noise  and  royal  cere- 
mony ;  bearing  her  from  the  scene  of  her  victories ;  and 
he  went  slowly  forth  back  over  the  river  into  the  haunts 
of  the  old  city  with  the  stray  dog  in  his  bosom. 

With  the  riches  of  his  genius  had  he  made  the  hearts 
of  the  poor  and  heavy-laden  to  rejoice  that  night  in  inno- 
cent and  natural  delight:  with  the  stripes  of  human  in- 
gratitude and  oblivion  was  he  scourged  that  night  him- 
self. 

"What  matter?  what  matter?"  he  murmured,  as  he 
went  through  the  driving  sheets  of  snow.  "  What 
matter  ? — she  is  happy." 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

In  the  little  kitchen  of  the  river-house  in  the  vine  coun- 
try an  old  woman  sat  beside  her  fire. 

Her  home  had  everything  that  her  hardy  habits  stood 
in  need  of;  there  was  abundance  of  wood  in  the  log  closet, 
there  was  abundance  of  brown  sweet  loaves  in  the  bread- 
pot,  there  was  ample  winter  provision  in  the  red  earthen 
pans  and  the  shining  brass  dishes;  there  was  a  bright 
and  pleasant  comfort  in  the  fire-glow,  in  the  scent  of  the 
herbs,  in  the  purr  of  the  cal  ;  and  a  sturdy,  bright-visaged 
peasant  girl  of  sixteen,  a  grand-niece  of  ber  own  from  a 
distant  province,  never  left  her  day  or  night.     Yet  in  the 


340  TRICOTRIN, 

worn,  brave,  patient,  sunburnt  face,  so  old,  so  still,  so 
dark,  there  was  an  abiding,  unutterable  grief, — a  grief 
that  never  spoke. 

In  the  long  summer  days  she  would  creep  slowly  into 
the  porch,  under  the  great  flowering  boughs  of  the  chest- 
nuts, and  stand  for  hours  shading  her  eyes  with  her  hand, 
and  looking  out  to  where  the  distant  road  ran  through  the 
vine-fields, — the  road  that  led  to  the  great  world. 

In  the  long  winter  nights  she  would  move  toward  the 
window,  and  draw  aside  its  little  red  curtain,  and  sit  for 
hours  looking  out  to  where  the  swollen  river  roared  be- 
tween its  banks, — the  river  that  swept  westward  to  the 
sea. 

Summer  and  winter  she  watched  for  that  which  never 
came  :  the  earth  holds  no  greater  agony. 

At  times  she  would  go  up  the  stairway  to  a  great, 
heavy  walnut-press,  full  of  curious  doors  and  dim  re- 
cesses, and  unlock  these,  and  draw  them  forth,  and  gaze 
at  their  contents  ; — linen  and  woolen  stuffs,  and  furs,  and 
many  different  heaps  of  gold :  she  never  touched  them, 
but  she  would  gaze  at  them  very  long.  And  at  other 
times  she  would  sit  under  the  chestnuts,  or  over  the 
warm  hearth,  as  the  seasons  of  the  year  went  by,  with 
only  that  mute  and  hopeless  pain  upon  her  face,  saying 
nothing,  but  only  stroking  the  white  head  of  the  great 
cat,  Bebee. 

She  knit,  and  spun,  and  eat,  and  drank,  and  sliced  the 
onions,  and  washed  the  lettuces,  and  dried  the  thyme, 
and  worked  on,  and  served  herself  with  industrious  tra- 
vail, as  all  the  temper  and  the  teachings  of  her  life  had 
made  her  do,  while  there  was  one  lingering  pulse  of 
strength  in  her  aged  limbs.  But  she  scarcely  ever  spoke; 
and  the  look  in  her  eyes  never  changed. 

It  was  only  when  she  sank  to  sleep  in  the  warmth  of 
the  sun,  or  the  heat  of  the  fire,  that  in  her  dreams  words 
stole  brokenly  through  the  lips,  whose  sternness  relaxed, 
and  whose  silence  was  broken.  And  the  little  Lorraine 
peasant  maiden,  bending  over  her,  with  pity,  and  with 
wonder,  found  those  dream-murmured  words  to  be  ever 
the  same: 

"  They  never  come  back  !     They  never  come  back  !" 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         341 


CHAPTER   XXXIV. 

"I  have  not  sold  one  1"  said  a  little  Italian  lad,  with 
his  soft  brown  eyes  brimming  over  with  tears:  he  was  a 
half-starved  delicate  child  of  some  ten  or  twelve  years, 
with  a  tray  of  white  images. 

He  was  one  out  of  the  many  thousands,  bartered  for  a 
few  coins,  from  their  homes  on  the  slopes  of  the  Abruzzi 
or  Apennines.  A  miserable  home,  sheds  shared  with 
the  goat  and  the  ass,  with  dried  forest- leaves  for  a  bed, 
and  a  piece  of  sheepskin  for  a  garment,  and  a  draught  of 
sour  milk  for  a  meal :  but  which  yet  looked  so  happy  and 
so  fair  with  its  sweet-smelling  mountain  air,  and  its  long 
summer  days,  with  the  herds  at  pasture,  and  its  play  at 
eventime  under  the  broad  cork-tree,  and  its  deep  still  hush 
of  solitude,  with  the  spring-loosened  snows  stealing  down 
through  the  silence, — when  the  child  had  been  torn  from 
them  all  forever,  and  carried  northward  and  westward,  to 
sull'er  the  anguish  of  cities,  the  desolation  of  the  streets, 
the  famine  of  home-sickness  amid  alien  crowds. 

He  had  not  sold  one  :  standing  there  all  the  day  through 
in  the  gay,  changing,  thoughtless  throngs  of  Paris.  And 
he  knew  that  if  he  went  back  to  his  taskmaster  without  a 
coin  for  all  his  wasted  day,  the  blows  would  rain  down 
on  him  like  hail,  and  he  would  be  flung  into  the  noisome, 
pestilential  darkness  of  the  cellar  that  he  lived  in,  without 
even  the  mouldy  crust  of  bread  that  was  by  right  his 
supper.  Worse  things  even  than  this  were  done  to  him, — 
a  young  child  in  a  strange  land,  with  the  seeds  of  mortal 
disease  in  him,  sure  to  die  and  tell  no  tale:  and  he  wept 
bitterly  in  the  springtide  sunshine  that  quivered  through 
a  million  leaves  in  a  million  threads  of  glory  on  his  head. 

He  had  sold  nothing,  eaten  nothing',  uol  drunk  even  a 
drop  of  water  since  the  sweel  balmy  April  day  had  com- 
menced; and  on  an  organ  near  they  had  played  an  old 
Lombardic  tunc  that  his  mother  had  used  to  sing  to  him 

2<J* 


342  TRIC0TR1N, 

in  the  little  cabin  under  the  rock,  while  the  evening  mists 
grew  white  and  hid  the  valley  below.  And  the  air  had 
made  the  tears  start  in  his  eyes,  and  the  great  sobs  rise 
in  his  chest:  that  time  seemed  so  long — ah,  God! — so 
long  ago  !  For  a  childhood  that  is  unhappy  is  as  a  mar- 
tyrdom without  an  end. 

"  I  have  not  sold  one !"  he  cried  to  the  only  living  creat- 
ure who  that  day  paused  beside  him,  to  ask  why  a  little, 
pale,  thin,  wretched  child  was  in  sorrow  in  a  foreign  city. 

"Ah  1  You  grieve  because  the  world  will  have  none 
of  your  toys?"  cried  his  questioner.  "  Well, — that  is  the 
grievance  of  all  of  us.  The  woman  will  not  have  our 
love, — the  public  will  not  have  our  science, — the  galleries 
will  not  hold  our  art, — the  nation  will  not  accept  our 
policies, — one  way  or  another  everybody  chafes  because 
every  one  else  will  not  take  to  his  playthings.  And  the 
successful  man  is  the  man  who  knows  how  to  turn  his 
toys  to  the  tastes  of  the  moment." 

The  boy  looked  up,  shrinking  from  the  jest  that  seemed 
to  him  so  untimely  and  so  unmerciful ;  but  as  he  met  the 
eyes  bent  on  him,  he  took  hope  from  their  sunny  compas- 
sion. There  was  no  pity  in  the  words,  but  there  was  in- 
finite pity  in  the  look ;  and  children  and  dogs  regard  the 
glance  far  more  than  the  speech. 

"I  have  sold  nothing!"  he  repeated  once  more,  wist- 
fully, with  the  sobs  stifled  in  his  throat.  "And  you  do 
not  know  what  the  Patron  is  when  one  goes  back  without 
money!" 

"He  beats  you — eh?" 

"Ah!" — the  child  gave  a  great  shudder,  a  shudder  of 
remembrance  and  foreboding  intermingled. 

"  Of  course  he  does.  He  sees  the  world  thrash  all  who 
have  not  the  knack  of  getting  gold  in  it.  He  only  follows 
the  fashion.  He  would  not  beat  you  if  you  stole  ? — to 
be  sure  not;  he  follows  the  fashion  there  too.  But  you 
do  not  steal  ?" 

"No!     I  am  afraid." 

"  Well, — not  a  noble  motive  for  abstinence,  but  a  whole- 
some one  in  the  absence  of  a  sturdier.  Retain  it.  And 
you  have  not  taken  a  sou  all  this  day  through  ?" 

"Not  one!"  sobbed  the  child,  in  a  loud  wail  of  terrified 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         343 

misery.     "Not  one  !  and  he  will  thrash  me  till  I  cannot 
stand." 

"Most  men  are  in  your  predicament,  save  a  few  happy 
hawkers  who  know  well  how  to  trim  their  wares,  and  a 
few  wise  men  like  myself,  who,  having  nothing  to  buy  or 
to  sell,  contrive  to  live  at  our  ease.  Well,  if  I  had  the 
money  to  purchase  your  trayful,  you  should  have  it ;  since 
I  have  not,  let  me  see  if  I  can  get  rid  of  some  of  that 
trumpery  for  you." 

Before  the  astonished  and  sobbing  child  had  recovered 
his  amaze  at  an  address  that  rang  on  his  ear  as  so  wan- 
tonly cruel,  his  companion  had  caught  up  the  board  full 
of  white  images,  sprang  on  a  bench  under  one  of  the 
linden-trees  of  the  boulevard,  and,  raised  thus  above  the 
passing  populace,  arrested  its  attention  by  his  attitude 
and  his  challenge. 

"Stop!  all  you  who  are  useless  drones  in  the  city!"  he 
cried  aloud.  "The  industrious  men  maybe  off,  they  will 
not  diminish  the  crowd  very  much!" 

By  "uc  accord  all  the  throng  paused  under  the  limes, 
careless  how  their  stoppage  incriminated  themselves  into 
his  first  category. 

"Listen!"  cried  several  voices.  "That  is  Tricotrin 
there — all!  he  is  better  than  the  theaters  any  day  !" 

And  they  gathered  nearer  about  the  lime  trunk,  curious 
to  know  what  he  could  be  doing  there,  with  his  board  of 
plaster  casts  held  in  air,  and  his  eyes  laughing  down 
on  their  upturned  faces.  They  were  used  to  him  in  many 
phases:  from  a  Harlequin  dancing  at  their  barriere  balls 
to  a  Gracchus  leading  them  in  years  that  were  red  with 
iv\  olution. 

Whether  he  danced  with  them,  fought  with  them, 
laughed  with  them,  or  suffered  with  them,  he  was  still 
1  hen-  own — Tricotrin. 

Rapidly  one  and  another  joined  the  first  speaker,  and 
the  group  grew,  and  grew,  with  the  marvelous  celerity 
of  a  city  throng,  and  loitered  about  the  linden-tree  that 
sheltered  the  bench  where  their  favorite  stood, — the  board 
of  plaster  toys  resting  on  his  lefl  arm,  and  the  broad  blos- 
soming boughs  flinging  their  shadows  upon  him. 

"Ah,  my  people  of  Paris!"  he  cried  to  them.     "Look 


344  TRICOTRIN, 

at  these  things,— the  little  lacl  who  owns  them  has  not 
been  able  to  sell  one  of  them  among  you.  How  is  that  ? 
You  are  not  commonly  loth  to  buy  new  toys;  no  nation 
spends  its  money  sooner  or  wider  upon  playthings.  The 
world  knows  that.  Why, — we  are  the  great  toy-shop  of 
Europe. 

"  These  are  brittle,  you  say  ?  Well,  there  is  no  gain- 
saying it.  And  they  soil  with  a  touch  1  I  admit  it. 
And  they  are  hollow  within,  only  masks  at  the  best  ? — ■ 
there  is  no  question  but  that  is  true  too.  I  grant  every 
one  of  your  objections.  But  are  they  anything  new 
against  playthings  ?     I  guess  not. 

"Look  at  your  pet  toy  'prestige.'  Is  not  that  brittle 
enough  ?  What  a  glittering,  inflated,  gold-bedizened, 
empty-stomached  bladder,  that  a  single  blow  from  the 
cudgel  of  adversity  breaks  and  shrivels  into  naught  1  Can 
you  eat  such  a  bladder,  can  you  drink  from  it,  can  you 
feed  hungry  mouths  on  it,  can  you  take  voyages  in  it,  can 
you  trust  it  to  be  as  sound  and  as  solid  as  a  nugget  of 
ore,  or  as  a  loaf  of  brown  bread? — of  course  not.  Yet 
nine  times  out  of  ten  you  spend  all  your  wealth  on  it,  and 
you  are  so  busy  blowing  with  all  your  breath  into  it  to 
send  it  higher,  that  you  never  notice  the  grave  being  dug 
at  your  feet,  and  your  children  being  sucked  down  into 
it.  Then  how  in  justice  can  you  urge  that  you  will  not 
purchase  this  plaster  bust  of  Homer,  because  a  crack  will 
make  it  worthless  ? 

"But  they  soil  so  soon,  you  say; — what  is  the  thing 
you  love  best  to  play  with  at  your  leisure,  whether  you 
be  a  noble  drinking  his  wines,  or  a  cobbler  stitching  his 
leather,  a  duke  yawning  in  a  palace,  or  a  lemonade  seller 
lying  in  the  sun?  Why — a  woman's  name,  I  fancy. 
How  you  toss  it  up  like  a  ball  in  the  smoke-clouds  of  slan- 
der: how  you  pull  the  dainty  down  off  it,  as  off  a  but- 
terfly's wings  ;  how  you  fling  it  from  one  to  another,  care- 
less of  everything  except  how  you  get  your  sport  out  of 
it  !  Well,  I  warrant  you  that  not  one  of  these  little 
white  vases,  not  one  of  these  little  white  statues,  can  be 
smirched  one-half  so  swiftly  as  can  a  woman's  fair  fame. 
And  off  these  you  can  scrape  the  soil ;  but  off  that  you  can 
never  again  remove  the  stain  you  once  have  made  on  it. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAfF  AND   STRAY.         345 

"  But  they  are  hollow  inside,  you  still  urge  ? — fie,  for 
shame  1  What  a  plea  that  is  1  Have  you  the  face  to 
make  it?     If  you  have,  let  me  bargain  with  you. 

"  When  all  the  love  that  is  fair  and  false  goes  begging 
for  believers,  and  all  the  passion  that  is  a  sham  fails  to 
find  one  Tool  to  buy  it: — when  all  the  priests  and  politi- 
cians clap  in  vain  together  the  brazen  cymbals  of  their 
tongues,  because  their  listeners  will  not  hearken  to  brass 
clangor,  nor  accept  it  for  the  music  of  the  spheres : — when 
all  the  creeds,  that  feast  and  fatten  upon  the  cowardice 
and  selfishness  of  men,  are  driven  out  of  hearth  and  home, 
and  mart  and  temple,  as  impostors  that  put  on  the  white 
beard  of  reverence  and  righteousness  to  pass  current  a 
cheater's  coin: — when  all  the  kings  that  promise  peace 
while  they  swell  their  armories  and  armies ;  when  all  the 
statesmen  that  chatter  of  the  people's  weal  as  they  steal 
up  to  the  locked  casket  where  coronets  are  kept;  when  all 
the  men  who  talk  of  'glory,'  and  prate  of  an  'idea'  that 
they  may  stretch  their  nations'  boundary,  and  filch  their 
neighbors'  province, — when  all  these  are  no  longer  in  the 
land,  and  no  more  looked  on  with  favor,  then  I  will  be- 
lieve your  cry  that  you  hate  the  toys  which  are  hollow. 

"Empty  indeed  these  are, — these  little  heads  of  Cupid 
and  little  groups  of  the  Madonna, — but  empty  as  they 
may  be,  they  cannot  be  so  hollow  as  those  things  that  I 
have  quoted,  that  you  cherish,  and  adore,  and  purchase, 
and  have  faith  in!  Brittle,  quick  to  soil,  and  a  mere 
shell,  with  nothing  in  it!  Why,  my  plaster  cast  lias 
copied  most  exactly  all  your  toys  of  love  and  ambition  1 
Come  buy  them,  then!  No  excuse  is  left  you.  1  have 
broken  your  excuses  one  by  one,  like  the  fagots  in  the 
falile!"' 

"  We  will  buy  them,  Tricotrin  !  We  will  buy  them  at 
your  own  price!"  cried  twenty  voices  from  the  laughing 
throng  below  him. 

He  knew  well  how  to  deal  with  them,  with  that  Paris 
crowd,  sip  quickly  moved  to  raillery,  to  wrong,  to  tears,  to 
sympathy,  to  rage,  with  swifter  mutations  than  any  other 
crowds  ever  know. 

"  We  will  buy  them  !  Throw  them  down  to  us  !"  they 
shouted,  thronging  closer  ahout  the  lime-tree,  and  look- 


346  TRICOTRIN, 

ing  upward  to  his  face  on  which  the  mellow  sunset  glow 
was  falling. 

He  held  up  his  hand  with  a  gesture  to  them  to  pause 
an  instant;  and  the  ironic  gay  scorn  in  his  eyes  softened 
and  a  graver  tenderness  of  regard  shone  on  them. 

"  Wait  an  instant :  not  for  my  sake.  For  the  sake  of  a 
better  thing — humanity.  See  here, — this  is  one  of  the 
shameful  scandals  of  our  cities.  A  child  torn  from  his 
home,  divorced  from  honest  labor,  set  to  a  pretended 
trade,  that  by  it  he  may  cloak  theft;  spoiled  for  an  honest 
citizen,  that  he  may  pander  to  the  greed  of  an  overseer  too 
idle  to  labor  for  himself.  If  it  be  thus  with  the  green 
wood,  what  will  it  be  with  the  dry  ?  If  it  be  thus  that 
the  young  children  are  reared,  of  what  sort  will  their  fu- 
tures be  ?  Ah — we  enlarge  the  prisons,  and  we  multiply 
the  law  courts,  and  we  leave  the  school  and  the  cradle  to 
chance  !  We  let  the  spawning  beds  multiply  their  poison ; 
and  we  wonder  that  devil-fish  are  all  that  swarm  in  our 
seas  !  This  boy  is  innocent — as  yet.  But  the  choice  is 
given  him  betwixt  blows  and  theft,  starvation  and  dis- 
honesty. Who  shall  look  for  moral  courage  in  a  child  to 
enable  him  to  withstand  where  men  succumb  ?  Buy 
these  toys  at  their  own  fair  prices.  You  will  do  a  good 
deed.  But  do  it  for  the  sake  of  the  young  thing  that  is 
in  need  and  in  hunger, — not  for  mine." 

Their  answer  was  a  shower  of  silver  on  the  bench 
where  he  stood,  and  twoscore  hands  were  eagerly  out- 
stretched to  seize  and  share  the  little  casts  and  busts. 

He  parceled  them  out  among  the  throng,  and  took 
the  coins  from  each,  that  from  each  was  due,  for  the 
plaster  thing  that  had  been  given  in  exchange  for  it.  The 
surplus  he  forced  back  upon  the  buyers. 

"  No,"  he  said,  as  they  pressed  it  upon  him.  "  Give 
him  his  proper  wage, — no  alms.  I  asked  for  a  kindly 
act,  and  you  have  done  it.  We  will  not  teach  him  to 
look  on  sympathy  as  a  mere  goose  with  golden  eggs,  or 
he  may  one  day  kill  the  bird  that  now  has  saved  him." 

Then,  as  rapidly  as  he  had  mounted  the  seat  under 
the  lime,  he  sprang  down  from  it,  thrust  the  money  in  the 
image  boy's  hand,  aud  was  lost  to  sight  within  the  doors 
of  the  wine-shop  close  behind  his  lime-tree. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         347 

The  throng-  broke  up.  The  people  went  on  their  ways  ; 
those  who  had  obtained  one  of  the  white  images,  holding 
it  tenderly  as  a  precious  relic.  One  very  old  woman  from 
the  seaboard  of  the  west,  fondled  with  rapt  adoration  a 
little  plaster  medallion  of  which  the  value  was,  at  utter- 
most, two  copper  pieces. 

"I  will  put  it  over  my  bed,"  she  muttered.  "  It  will 
keep  disease  away." 

She  was  close  beside  the  door  of  a  carriage  as  she 
spoke  ;  a  carriage  that  had  been  checked  by  the  throng 
at  but  little  distance  from  the  linden-tree;  its  occupant 
heard  her  and  leaned  forward. 

"  I  will  buy  that  medal  from  you,  —  here  is  a  gold 
piece." 

The  old  Vendean,  stupid  and  purblind,  stared  up  with 
dazzled  eves.  She  had  all  the  avarice  of  the  French 
peasant  strong  in  her;  she  was  but  a  rag-picker  grueling 
in  perpetual  filth;  she  lived  miserably  that  she  might 
have  the  miser's  delight  of  hoarding  a  few  silver  pieces 
in  an  old  earthen  pot  under  the  bricks  of  her  stove.  She 
had  never  owned  so  much  as  a  broad  golden  piece  all  at 
once  in  her  life;  but  she  hugged  her  medallion  closer,  and 
shook  her  bend  in  sturdy  denial. 

"I  will  not  sell  it,— no  !" 

"  And  why  ?" 

The  question  was  imperious  and  impatient,  asked  by 
one  who  was  little  used  to  brook  or  hear  refusals. 

"Because  it  came  from  Tricotrin,"  muttered  the  tooth- 
less, withered,  palsied  crone,  as  she  tottered  on  her  way 
through  the  crowd. 

She  did  nut  ask  or  heed  who  had  spoken  to  her;  she 
haled  nil  those  who  drove  in  chariots.  It  had  been  just 
such  a  carriage  a.-  this,  rolling  rapidly  to  a  king's  festival, 
that  had  passed  over  the  fair,  slender  body  of  the  daughter 
of  her  youth,  and  crushed  to  pulp  the  delicate  brown  limbs, 
— and  led  her  in  her  old  age  no  better  love  than  the 
earthen  pipkin  under  the  stove-bricks. 

The  greal  lady  who  had  proffered  her  the  gold  for  her 
plaster  bas-relief,  drove  onward  with  a  pang  at  her  heart. 

'A  11  old  creature,  thai  -leans  her  food  from  the  gutters  of 
the  streets,  is  truer  to  him  than  1  have  been  !"  she  thought. 


348  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

In  a  great  palace  of  Rome  a  man  lay  sick  unto  death. 

Unto  death  ! — though  none  were  suffered  to  know  it 
save  himself,  though  he  made  no  moan  at  any  one  of  the 
inward  tortures  that  consumed  him,  though  he  reclined 
by  his  lofty  casement  watching  the  rising  of  the  moon, 
in  what  his  household  deemed  the  mere  lassitude  of  long 
weakness. 

He  knew  that  he  must  die ;  whether  in  this  night,  or 
not  for  another  year,  he  could  not  tell,  nor  science  tell  for 
him  ;  out  he  knew  that  his  doom  was  certain — as  certain 
as  that  the  moonlight  was  streaming,  white  and  limpid 
and  clear  as  morning,  through  his  vast,  painted,  silent 
chamber.  But  it  was  his  own  secret,  and  he  had  kept  it. 
He  meant  thus  to  keep  it  until  such  time  as  the  dumb- 
ness and  grayness  of  dissolution  should  disclose  it  for 
him. 

He  was  oftentimes  racked  with  torment.  The  disease 
that  had  fastened  on  him  is  ever  merciless,  sparing  not 
prince  nor  peasant;  a  vampire  which,  when  once  it  has 
made  fast  its  fangs,  never  leaves  hold  till  its  prey  is  slain. 
But  he  never  suffered  a  complaint  or  a  lament  to  escape 
from  him.  He  was  of  delicate  frame,  of  fragile  strength  ; 
he  had  long  been  a  scholar,  an  invalid,  a  recluse ;  none 
deemed  it  more  than  some  slight  increase  of  feebleness 
that  bound  him  to  his  couch. 

Into  the  mournful  shadowy  hues  of  his  chamber,  where, 
by  his  will,  only  the  moonbeams  shed  radiance,  there 
came  a  sudden  golden  blaze  of  light,  a  sudden  odorous 
waft  of  perfume,  a  sudden  flash  of  glorious  beauty,  that 
came  out  from  the  gloom  as  the  sun  from  a  cloud. 

These  came  with  the  entrance  of  a  woman,  behind 
whom  two  little  pages  bore  two  silver  branches  of  wax- 
lights. 

She  swept  over  the  room  as  a  swan  sweeps  over  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         349 

water,  and  came  to  him,  noiselessly,  save  for  the  soft 
shiver  of  her  silken  robes.  She  was  beautiful,  exceed- 
ingly ;  and  on  her  face  shone  all  the  victory  and  proud 
security  of  a  supreme  power.  As  she  moved,  her  dia- 
monds gleamed  on  her  breast  and  in  her  hair  and  in  the 
folds  of  her  skirts ;  she  was  attired  for  a  costume-ball  at 
the  Palace  of  the  Doria,  and  had  robed  herself  as  Marie 
Antoinette  de  France,  diademed  and  ermined  in  the  full 
ceremonial  of  royalty. 

She  came  to  him  and  laid  her  white  hand  on  his. 

"  I  trust  you  are  better  this  evening  ?" 

His  eyes  dwelt  on  her  with  an  unutterable  adoration. 

"  I  believe  so,"  he  answered  simply.  "  I  think  I  shall 
soon  suffer  nothing." 

Some  accents  in  his  voice  attracted  her  ;  she  regarded 
him  more  earnestly. 

"  You  do  suffer,  I  fear  ?"  she  asked. 

"A  little — perhaps.  In  not  being  able  to  go  with  you, 
for  instance.     But  I  am  weak,  that  is  all." 

There  are  lies  nobler  than  truth. 

"How  magnificent  you  look  to-night,  my  empress  I" 
he  continued,  while  his  large,  dark  eyes  gazed  on  her 
with  rapt  worship.  "You  grow  more  beautiful  every 
hour  !  But  why  have  you  taken  that  part  for  yourself? 
A  discrowned  queen  has  nothing  in  common  with  you  J" 

She  laughed  slightly,  glancing  at  her  own  splendid 
vision  in  the  opposite  mirrored  wall. 

"No,  indeed!  But  I  am  Marie  Antoinette  in  her  om- 
nipotence, in  her  glory.  Nay!  I  am  more  than  she.  I 
am  France  personified  !     My  costume  is  perfect?" 

"  Vim  are  perfect — yes." 

He  deemed  her  so :  this  exquisite  thing,  whom  he 
called  wile,  and  in  whose  heart  there  was  no  throb  for 
him,  but  only  one  passionate,  all-absorbing  love  for  his 
great  rival  of  the  world. 

"Yon  Bee  this  diamond  arrived  in  time?"  she  con- 
tinued, touching  the  center  stone  of  her  necklace  of  un- 
usual size  and  brilliancy.  "I  was  so  alia  id  it  might  be 
retarded  on  its  way  through  the  east,  though  a  courier 
traveled  night  and  day  with  it." 

He  smiled  indulgently — as  to  a  spoiled  child. 

30 


350  TRICOTRIN, 


a 


I  bade  them  get  it  here,  if  any  way  possible,  by  this 
evening.  You  have  now  the  largest  jewel  out  of  the 
European  regalias.  Those  trifles  are  a  woman's  pride,  I 
know." 

A  spasm,  whose  suffering  he  could  not  entirely  conceal 
with  all  his  fortitude,  changed  his  color  and  caught  his 
breath  a  moment  as  he  spoke.    She  looked  at  him  quickly. 

"I  am  afraid  you  are  more  ill  than  usual?  Had  I  not 
better  stay  with  you  ?" 

There  were  compassion  and  the  desire  to  testify  it  in 
the  offer;  but  he  knew  well  that  it  was  the  accent  of 
duty,  not  of  affection,  that  spoke  in  it.  He  strove  to 
smile  again  as  he  replied  to  it. 

"Stay! — and  leave  the  Dorian  ball?  Stay! — and 
sacrifice  that  superb  costume  for  which  your  diamond  has 
traveled,  expressly,  the  whole  way  from  Benares  ?  Nay 
— I  am  not  so  selfish,  my  beautiful  one.  You  are  not 
made  to  be  chained  clown  to  a  sick  couch  in  all  your 
youth  and  all  your  loveliness  " 

"  It  is  I  who  am  selfish — not  you,"  she  said,  hurriedly, 
in  a  momentary  pang  of  conscience  and  of  self-accusation. 

"  Selfish  ?  Oh,  no, — wait  until  I  reproach  you,  to  re- 
proach }rourself.  Is  it  not  one  of  the  few  pleasures  that 
my  life  has  known  to  be  certain  that  you  are  happy  ? 
Go — you  are  late  as  it  is ;  and  make  the  world  say  once 
more,  what  it  has  so  often  said  already,  that  all  its  king- 
doms do  not  hold  a  creature  so  victorious  and  so  beautiful 
as  my  wife  !" 

She  smiled ;  her  life  was  so  steeped  in  flattery,  that  it 
seemed  only  the  daily  utterance  of  what  was  her  natural 
due  She  was  rejoiced  to  go ;  she  had  felt  fearful  lest  he 
might  accept  the  offer  that  her  duty  had  wrung  from  her. 
She  stooped,  and  lightly  touched  his  forehead  with  her 
lips,  and  turned  with  her  soft,  languid  grace  from  his 
couch. 

"  You  are  right;  it  is  late,"  she  said,  as  she  glanced  at 
a  timepiece,  and  floated  away  through  the  length  of  the 
chamber,  the  lights  which  her  pages  bore  falling  on  the 
flashing  jewels  of  the  royal  dress  of  France. 

The  world  waited  for  "her,  the  world  and  all  its  homage. 
And — for  the  husband  whom  she  left  there, — had  he  not 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         351 

his  reward?     Would  not  every  man  whose  sight  beheld 
her  .beauty  to-night,  envy  his  possession  of  herself? 

It  was  enough;  she  had  repaid  him. 

His  eyes  followed  her  with  a  terrible  yearning  love 
that  hungered  for  one  backward  glance,  one  farewell  word ; 
— none  came,  she  passed  out  without  one  lingering  look, 
one  last  good-night.  She  was  thinking  of  the  world  that 
waited  for  her  in  the  Palace  of  the  Dorias. 

The  lights  passed  away,  the  curtain  fell  behind  them, 
the  trailing  of  her  train  upon  the  marble  floor  ceased  to 
break  the  silence.  He  was  left  alone.  And  he  covered 
his  face  with  his  hands,  and  shuddered  as  with  cold,  the 
dews  of  anguish  standing  on  the  brow  that  her  lips  had 
brushed  as  lightly  and  as  carelessly  as  the  wings  of  a  but- 
terfly  brush  the  face  of  a  corpse.  He  would  have  borne 
the  throes  of  ten  thousand  deaths  to  spare  her  one  throb 
of  pain, — and  he  was  no  more  to  her  than  the  glittering 
stones  that  shone  on  her  fair  bosom;  nay,  not  one  tithe 
so  much!  Honor,  affluence,  gladness,  luxurious  ease,  im- 
perial pomp,  and  all  the  homage  that  the  world  will  only 
render  to  those;  who  can  command  it,  had  come  through 
his  hand  to  her.  Through  him  she  was  throned  on  high, 
where  perpetual  summer  and  everlasting  suiftight  were 
her  portion,  where  the  storm  of  calamity,  and  the  chill  of 
poverty,  and  the  scorch  of  shame  never  more  could  touch 
her.  Through  him,  the  desire  of  her  soul  was  given  unto 
her;  and  the  crown  of  greatness  was  set  on  her  proud 
brows  in  lieu  of  the  brand  of  bastardy,  and  of  the  thorn- 
wreaths  of  vain  ambition,  and  of  disappointed  effort. 
Through  him  all  things  that  she  had  craved  had  become 
hers  without  price  or  penalty.  And  his  reward  was  that 
men  grudgingly  counted  the  years  of  his  life  thai  were  set 
a-  a  barrier  betwixt    them  ami  her  loveliness!      And    that 

to  this  exquisite  thing, — cruel  withoul  intent  and  unwit- 
ting of  the  pain  that  W-d  her  pleasure,  as  infants  when 
they  catch  at  butcerflies, — he  was  only  as  the  treasury 
from  which  the  gold  that  was  needed  for  her  triumphs 
came,  :is  the  mine  whence  the  jewels  of  ner  regalia  were 
drawn,  as  the  magician  whose  wand  summoned  around 
her  the  splendors  of  an  enchanted  world. 

He  lavished  all  that  the  earth  held  upon  his  idol.      And 


352  TRICOTRIN, 

she — she  was  not  so  much  moved  by  all  his  priceless  gifts 
as  in  the  days  of  her  childhood  she  had  been  moved  by  a 
single  branch  of  dog-roses,  a  single  horn  of  silvered  sweet- 
meats, from  another's  hand. 

She  was  radiant,  thoughtless,  mutable,  capricious,  sur- 
rendered to  the  indulgence  of  every  whim,  and  forgetful 
of  the  hand  from  which  the  power  of  such  indulgence 
came, — it  is  ever  on  natures  such  as  this  that  love  is 
poured  out  most  abundantly;  natures  that  rejoice  in  its 
effect,  but  no  more  heed  its  root  than  the  bee  heeds  the 
roots  of  the  flower-bell  that  it  despoils  of  its  honey. 

In  her  heart  he  knew  not  one  pulse  beat  for  him. 

In  her  absence  he  knew  not  one  thought  turned  to  him. 

In  her  future  he  knew  not  one  memory  would  be  faith- 
ful to  him. 

And  this  bitterness  was  greater  to  him  than  all  the  bit- 
terness of  death. 

For  he  suffered  also  that  jealousy  which,  arising  in 
noble  natures,  will  never  stoop  to  suspicion,  but  yet  it  is 
the  inevitable  offspring  of  that  possession  of  a  beloved  life, 
which  is  not  also  possession  of  the  soul  within  that  life. 

He  did  not  fear  the  safety  of  his  honor.  She  was 
proud,  she  was  truthful,  she  was  of  high  courage  ;  such 
women  do  not  carry  shame  to  their  husbands'  hearths. 
But — she  was  so  young,  she  was  so  beautiful,  she  was  so 
hourly  besieged  by  all  the  honeyed  eloquence  of  passion, 
and  he — he  was  left  here,  old  ere  his  time,  powerless  to 
attract  or  enchain  her,  gray,  weary,  hopeless,  paralyzed 
with  a  piteous  disease.  When  he  bade  her  go  forth  into 
the  world  where  her  lovers  wooed  her  ear,  and  every 
whisper  that  stirred  the  air  was  a  whisper  to  forget  him- 
self, he  reached  that  martyrdom  of  the  soul  of  which  the 
world  knows  naught,  but  which  surpasses  in  its  fortitude 
and  in  its  torture  every  martyrdom  of  the  body. 

The  night  was  very  still ;  through  the  lofty  casements 
the  lustrous  Roman  moon  shone  white  ;  the  great  chamber 
was  hushed  like  a  grave.  He  lay  there  long  with  his  face 
hidden,  and  no  sign  of  life  within  him,  save  now  and  then 
a  quiver  of  his  limbs  as  the  canker  of  death  within  him 
dealt  him  some  sharper  blow. 

A  dreamy  sense  of  exhaustion  and  of  peace  slowly 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  353 

stole  on  him,  stilling  his  suffering,  but  stilling  with  it  the 
life  in  his  veins.  His  attendants,  alarmed  at  his  long  si- 
lence, drew  noiselessly  near,  and  fearing  to  disturb  what 
might  be  merely  peaceful  sleep,  stood  inactive  round  his 
couch.  His  physicians,  hastily  summoned,  saw  that  it 
was  sleep  indeed,  the  sleep  that  knows  no  awakening. 
They  raised  him,  and  his  eyes  unclosed  with  the  old,  gen- 
tle smile  they  knew  so  well. 

"  This  is  death  ?"  he  asked. 

"  Seek  the  duchess — quick  1"  they  whispered  low  ;  but 
not  so  low  that  the  words  failed  to  catch  the  ear  of  the 
dying  man. 

"  No,  no  !"  he  murmured.  "  Tell  her  nothing.  It 
would  spoil  her  pleasure  !" 

And  his  last  breath  faded  from  his  lips  in  that  last 
thought  for  her. 

He  lay  dead  in  the  moonlight  that  streamed  about  him — 
fair,  cold,  pitdess,  radiant  as  the  life  that  he  had  cherished. 

In  Rome,  on  the  morrow,  men,  speaking  together  of  the 
last  of  the  once-famous  Dukes  of  Lira,  said  that  he  had 
made  no  mark  upon  the  world  save  by  his  strange  mar- 
riage with  his  beautiful  wife;  and  laid  many  wagers  as 
to  who  in  Europe  would  be  likeliest  to  marrv  his  fair 
duchess. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

The  noon  sun  shone  on  some  few  breadths  of  corn-land 
lying  cm  a  southern  hillside  above  a  winding  road,  where 
one  little  white,  brown-roofed  chalet  alone  stood  looking 
down  into  the  small,  cool,  dark-blue  lake  thai  slept  below. 

The  com  was  brown  and  ripe;  thecircle  of  the  seasons 
had  brought  the  harvesl  time  again;  the  wheat  was  lull 
in  ear:  ami,  with  the  yellow  riches  of  the  neighboring 
gourds  and  the  fruit,  of  some  goodly  olive-trees  hard  by, 
would  give  wealth  enough  for  a  peasant  of  the  Pyrenees 

30* 


354  TRICOTRIN, 

to  be  well  content  withal.  Yet  the  owner  of  the  nook  of 
arable  land  upon  the  chestnut-clothed  slope  was  weeping 
piteously,  like  Rachel  refusing  to  be  comforted,  like 
Rachel  having  lost  her  son  into  the  twilight  of  an  un- 
known fate. 

It  was  the  grief  of  grand'mere  for  Antoine  ;  it  was  the 
grief  of  a  million  mothers  when  the  sickle  of  State-Lust 
gathers  in  the  budding  corn  of  the  young  lives  they  love; 
it  was  the  grief  of  which  Theroigne  de  Mericourt  was  ig- 
norant when  in  answer  to  the  reproach — "  Why  will  ye 
women  breed  in  servitude,  why  are  ye  not  as  the  desert 
beasts,  that  losing  liberty  are  fruitless  ?" — she  replied, 
"  Did  not  the  child  smile  in  his  mother's  face  for  all  that 
Nero  or  Tiberius  reigned?" 

Under  Tyrannies  the  children  may  smile,  because  they 
know  not  what  Birth  has  brought  them;  but  under  Ty- 
rannies the  mothers  weep.  And  in  revolution  the  reddest 
hand,  the  voice  most  shrill  and  pitiless,  are  the  hand  and 
voice  of  a  woman. 

This  woman,  old  and  feeble,  lamented  for  the  son  of 
her  elder  years  whom  the  conscription  had  taken— t-taken 
from  his  peaceful  mountain  home,  and  his  pastoral  games, 
and  his  corn  raised  with  so  much  labor  on  the  arid  soil 
just  as  its  harvest  crowned  his  toil. 

She  stood  on  the  stone  sill  of  her  little  dwelling,  and 
beside  her  stood  a  man  in  the  loose  linen  shirt  of  the 
people,  with  a  violin  under  his  arm  and  a  little  black 
monkey  playing  at  his  feet. 

"  It  is  the  conscription  !"  she  cried,  wringing  her  hands 
— slender  hands,  for  she  had  been  city  born,  and  could 
not  aid  herself  as  could  the  sturdy  women  of  the  southern 
land.  "  The  conscription  1  See  how  the  government  de- 
vours us.  All  the  youngest,  and  bravest,  and  best,  drawn 
away  to  rot  in  the  battle-fields  !" 

"Chut!  good  friend,"  said  her  companion's  mellow 
voice,  that  was  in  itself  a  sound  of  consolation.  "  Blame 
not  the  government.  Blame  the  war-lusts  of  men's  souls. 
Look  you, — if  the  people  governed,  I  doubt  not  but  they 
would  be  as  cruel.  A  republic  and  peace  we  say — ay, 
we  shall  get  them,  perchance,  in  paradise.  Not  here. 
The  people  everywhere  are  hot  and  hasty  and  blind  in 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         355 

judgment ;  they  would  rush  into  wars  the  instant  that 
their  jealousy  or  their  vanity  smarted.  And  then  the 
youths  would  go  to  the  slaughter.  See  how  it  was  with 
them  in  the  days  of  Argonne  and  Jemappes." 

"  That  may  be,"  moaned  the  bereaved  mother.  "  But 
they  would  not  take  the  lad  from  the  plow,  the  boy  from 
earning  his  grandam's  bread,  the  child  with  the  down  on 
his  cheek  from  the  herd  of  goats  that  was  all  his  store. 
They  would  have  pity " 

"  On  their  own  class  ?  Possibly.  They  would  stay  at 
home  themselves,  and  send  the  poet,  the  scholar,  the 
artist,  the  statesman,  out  to  the  storms  of  the  grape- 
shot  ?  Oh,  yes !  But  would  that  come  nearer  justice, 
my  friend  ?" 

"  I  do  not  know !"  sobbed  the  woman,  inconsolable. 
"  I  only  know  Bernal  is  gone  !" 

"Ah  !"  murmured  Tricotrin.  "  That  is  all  most  of  you 
know  of  justice, — how  she  looks  through  your  own  little 
eyelet-hole  1  Listen  here,  Aiinee  Herbalez,  we  all  have 
our  burdens;  but  it  depends  on  ourselves  how  long  we 
carry  them.  The  conscription  is  hard,  that  I  grant  you; 
and  were  the  bodies  of  men  well  trained  to  arms,  and 
their  minds  to  tolerance,  there  need  be  no  conscription, 
because  there  would  be  no  war.  But  while  the  world 
wags  as  it  does,  men  must  be  patriots,  and  every  patriot 
must  be  a  soldier  if  necessity  arise.  And  Bernal  was  a 
lad  of  spirit;  he  would  not  have  been  easy  in  your  little 
nook  all  his  days.  Who  knows? — he  may  carry  the 
Baton  in  his  knapsack  ?  There  was  a  rough  peasant  boy 
once,  down  in  the  south,  in  whose  fate  it  was  written  to 
sit  on  the  throne  of  the  great  Gustavus, — and  his  race 
reigns  to-day.  Who  can  tell  what  Bernal  may  not 
reach  ?" 

"  He  would  be  as  far  from  me  if  he  were  a  king  !"  mur- 
mured the  despairing  Herbalez.  "It  is  good  of  you 
to  talk  so.  and  it  is  true  thai  the  boy  was  well  pleased  to 
go  into  the  army,  promising  to  gel  covered  all  over  with 
orders,  lint ,  ah! — they  talk  of  the  stars  and  the  crosses, 
and  t  hey  die  in  a  ditch  !" 

"  Supreme  truth  !  Thousands  rot  at  an  Austerlitz,  and 
one   man  goes   home   a  conqueror.     If  I   kill   a  single 


356  TRICOTRIN, 

creature  for  a  bag  of  gold  coins,  I  am  guillotined  as  a 
murderer;  if  I  kill  a  million  creatures  for  a  diadem  of 
gold,  I  am  worshiped  as  a  hero.  Singular  arithmetic 
and  ethics!     But  hark  you " 

"  They  die  in  a  ditch  I"  wailed  the  woman.  "  My  bright 
innocent  boy ! — he  is  gone  into  the  hell  of  Paris,  where 
he  will  forget  his  God  and  me ;  and  they  will  draught 
him  out  to  that  hideous  Cayenne,  where  they  say  no 
strong  man  can  breathe  and  live." 

"What  regiment  have  they  drafted  him  into?" 

She  told  him  between  her  sobs. 

"All  right!  Only  the  second  battalion  will  go  to  Cay- 
enne. I  know  something  of  that  regiment's  command- 
ers,— for  that  matter  I  did  them  a  turn  one  night  down 
an  African  defile,  when  it  went  hard  with  them  against  a 
band  of  plunderers.  I  will  see  what  I  can  do  to  get  Ber- 
nal  left  with  the  first  battalion  at  Toulouse.  Toulouse  is 
not  so  far  but  you  can  look  at  him  now  and  then.  So 
take  heart !  The  boy  shall  come  back  here  with  his  lieu- 
tenancy if  we  can  get  him  one;  and — meantime,  your 
corn  is  spoiling  !" 

"What  matter  the  corn!"  she  cried,  impetuously. 
"  What  matter  the  corn,  if  you  can  save  my  boy  ?  God 
reward  you !  You  are  ever  like  sunshine  in  a  desolate 
place.     You  are  ever  full  of  generous  thoughts  !" 

"  Chut !  In  my  own  life  I  suck  the  sweetness  from  my 
cocoanuts,  and  only  eat  the  flesh  of  my  dates,  like  the 
wise  Arabian  lad;  but  when  I  see  my  fellow-creatures 
persistently  eating  their  cocoa-husks  and  their  date-stones, 
and  getting  no  other  nourishment,  I  do  my  best  to  set 
them  right.     And  the  corn  ?" 

"Ah,  it  is  a  terrible  thing  about  the  corn,"  sighed  the 
woman,  losing  her  ideal  grief  in  her  practical  care, 
through  that  necessity  which  is  at  once  the  slave-driver 
and  the  solacer  of  -the  poor.  "  Bernal  was  just  going  to 
reap  it ;  and  the  neighbors  in  the  valley  have  their  own 
business,  and  I  am  a  weak,  useless  thing,  and  one  night's 
storm  would  lay  it  and  kill  it " 

"Assuredly.     I  will  get  it  in  by  sunset." 

"You!" 

"Well !  Why  not?  Have  I  not  worked  in  the  fields 
before  now  ?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         35  f 

"  But  that  was  in  play  ?" 

Though  he  lived  with  them  and  like  them,  felt  with 
them  and  like  them,  there  was  about  him  that  which  the 
people  of  every  land  instinctively  obeyed  and  yielded  to 
as  the  sovereignty  of  one  above  them.  Superstition, 
growing  out  of  reverence  and  love,  gave  him  many  strange 
attributes  and  lofty  antecedents;  and  to  behold  him  one 
day  claim  the  kingship  of  the  world  would  not  have  been 
too  great  a  glory  for  him  in  the  sight  of  the  peasantry 
that  worshiped  him. 

"In  play?  Indeed.no.  I  worked  for  a  wage.  I  am  indo- 
lent enough,  good  Herbalez,  as  you  know ;  how  many  hours 
I  lie  in  the  sun  as  lazy  as  a  lazzarone  1  It  will  do  me  good 
to  get  in  your  wheat.  Corn  will  talk  to  us,  if  we  listen, 
better  than  most  men, — what  sermons  in  the  full  ripe  ears 
that  have  sprung  out  of  a  seed  that  had  looked  dead; 
what  poems  in  the  blue  cornflower  that  grows  among  the 
wheat  like  the  poetry  that  springs  through  the  busy  lives 
of  men;  wlial  rebukes  in  the  brave,  patient  lark  that 
builds  so  boldly,  though  the  reaping-hook  may  cut  her 
little  body  in  two  !  Come,  give  me  the  sickle,  there  is  no 
time  to  lose;  by  the  violet  of  the  skies  there  is  a  rain- 
storm due  before  to-morrow." 

With  fervent  thanks  she  gave  him  the  classic  tool,  and 
stood  awed  and  wondering  as  he  went  to  the  work.  To 
the  literal  mind  of  the  woman,  which  was  unpoetic  but 
yet  superstitious,  it  was  easier  to  believe  that  miracles 
happened,  and  that  the  wheat  and  the  blossoms  really 
had  tongues  for  him,  than  to  follow  the  fantastic  fancy 
which  for  him  filled  them  both  with  meaning. 

He  was  soon  in  the  little  field, — belted  in  by  the  chest- 
nuts, and  sultry  with  the  ardent  sun  of  August, — in  a 
corner  of  which  he  put,  down  his  knapsack,  his  blouse, 
ami  Mistigri,  who  being  a  spoilt  little  epicurean,  sat 
among  the  cornstalks,  disdainfully  biting  a  wheat  ear 
now  ami  then,  and  making  a  grimace  at  it. 

"This  is  the  way,  Mistigri,"  he  murmured  to  his  single 
confidant  ami  companion.  "When  dark  hours  are  down. 
work  through  them.  No  exorcism  charms  like  labor. 
Men's  souls  were  never  made  to  dwell  in  nighl  shadows 
like  the  owls.    To  repine  for  one's  self  is  something  so  nar- 


358  TRICOTRIN, 

row  and  mean.  While  one  has  health,  and  strength,  and 
sight,  and  liberty,  is  it  not  rank  blasphemy  to  say  one 
has  not  happiness  ?  Ah,  Mistigri,  there  was  a  beauty  in 
the  Mexican's  cultus  that  is  missing  from  the  modern 
creeds.  To  toss  wine  heavenward,  with  kisses,  when  the 
sun  rose — that  meant  Gratitude  and  Rejoicing.  And  then 
Christians  went  with  fire  and  sword,  with  the  Bible  of 
the  Jews  and  the  Inquisition  of  the  Spaniards,  to  mas- 
sacre all  those  bright  worshipers  by  way  of  teaching 
them  a  better  religion!     Paf]     Give  me  the  Pagans  !" 

Mistigri  nodded  assent,  being  a  little  Pagan  herself; 
and  Tricotrin  bent  himself  to  his  wrork,  the  hot  sun  shin- 
ing on  the  brown  corn,  the  yellow-winged  orioles  flying 
through  the  light,  the  poppies  and  cornflowers  bowTing 
under  the  sickle,  the  little  bright-eyed  mice  scampering 
off,  as  their  nests  were  laid  bare,  into  the  chestnut  wood 
belting  the  field. 

He  worked  fast  and  unremittingly ;  he  was  glad  of  the 
labor.  Down  below  there,  far  awTay  in  the  valley,  were 
some  delicate  spires  and  mighty  towers  bowered  in 
wood.  They  were  the  spires  and  towers  of  the  Chateau 
de  Lira. 

As  he  worked,  four  gay  equipages,  with  outriders  all 
aglitter  in  scarlet  and  silver,  passed  at  a  rapid  pace  below, 
along  the  road  winding  at  the  bottom  of  the  slope.  He 
paused  to  gaze  at  them,  shading  his  eyes  with  his  hand. 

"  That  is  our  Chatelaine,"  said  the  widow,  who  had  come 
out  tp  bring  him  a  jug  of  red  wine  and  a  roll  of  bread. 
"  That  is  the  beautiful  creature  I  told  you  of — the  great 
duchess  " 

"Yes;"  he  answered  her  simply;  and  he  took  up  his 
sickle,  and  went  to  work  afresh,  while  the  sound  of  the 
horses'  feet  still  rang  on  the  rocky  road  below. 

"  This  is  the  first  summer  season  she  has  been  here," 
resumed  the  woman,  sitting  down  with  her  knitting  on 
the  ledge  of  the  wooden  pale.  "  The  duke  never  came 
here  after  his  marriage:  that  took  place  far  away  south, 
out  of  France.  We  heard  of  it,  and  the  people  were 
well  pleased;  they  hoped  to  have  great  gayeties  at  the 
chateau  once  more.  But  it  was  not  so  ;  they  were  always 
in  Paris,  or  in  foreign  countries :  we  heard  that  he  died 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AXD   STRAY.         359 

abroad,  and  she  did  not  come  at  all;  never  until  this 
summer,  and  now, — now, — she  makes  up  for  the  long 
absence!  Such  extravagance,  such  pleasures,  such  hun- 
dreds of  guests,  such  a  life — such  a  life  !  They  do  nothing 
but  feast  themselves  like  princes,  and  my  boy  Bernal  is 
drawn  for  the  wars  !" 

She  dropped  twelve  stitches  in  her  knitting-work, — like 
many  other  democrats  who  leave  long  gaps  in  their  own 
work,  because  they  must  stay  away  from  it  to  rail  at  an 
Order. 

'•  She  is  not  generous  to  those  that  are  poor,  then  ?"  he 
asked,  bending  still  al  his  work. 

Bernal's  mother  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"I  do  not  suppose  she  ever  remembers  that  there  is 
anybody  living  who  has  not  cakes,  and  wine,  and  oil, 
cwvy  day!  Generous?  What  do  you  call  generous, 
Tricotrin?  They  mast  a  hundred  fowls,  I  have  heard 
tell,  in  her  kitchen  every  day;  they  drink  wine  that  has 
real  sparks  of  gold  in  it ;  they  laugh,  and  sing,  and  saun- 
ter all  their  hours  away;  they  sleep  in  satin  sheets — so 
they  say:  what  good  is  that  to  us?  If  you  were  to  go 
up  and  ask,  for  your  very  life,  you  could  not  see  her.  I 
did  try,  when  my  hoy  was  taken:  well!  how  was  it?  A 
servant  spoke  to  another  servant,  and  that  servant  sent  a 
page,  and  the  page  mocked  me,  and  sent  another,  and 
that  other  went  to  some  great  man  with  a  silver  chain 
on  him,  who  rebuked  me.  and  told  me  I  was  a  rude  woman, 
but  I  might  go  to  the  kitchens  and  ask  for  food.  Food! 
they  would  have  given  me  broken  hones  when  I  had  lost 
Bemal  to  the  army!  No, — she  is  a  fair  thing;  she  has 
a  face  like  the  sun.  hut  she  is  cold,  she  is  hard,  she  has 
no  thoughl  for  the  people.  Tricotrin — if  the  Revolution 
came  again,  1  could  find  it  in  my  heart  to  see  her  stripped 
and  scourged,  and  made  to  eat  the  bread  of  bitterness. 
Look  how  she  enjoys  while  we  .-idler  I" 

The  old  rankling  jealousy,  natural,  yet  so  cruel,  that 
lies  at  the  root  of  all  social  antagonism,  was  acrid  and 
almost  savage  in  the  words :  he  did  not  answer  her,  but 
reaped  the  corn  in  silence,  while  she  knitted  on,  striving 
to  recover  her  lost  stitches;   bul  the  gap  that  hail  been 


360  TRICOTRIN, 

made  would  not  close, — in  eagerness  for  a  revolution  of 
the  future  she  had  spoiled  her  labor  of  the  hour. 

There  are  many  reformers  like  the  Widow  Herbalez. 

By  sunset  the  little  golden  store  was  reaped  and  set 
in  sheaves, — the  graceful  sheaves  of  English  form,  with 
withes  of  wild  convolvulus,  and  scarlet  heads  of  poppy, 
bound  up  within  the  wheat.  He  was  free  from  his  self- 
imposed  duty ;  he  left  the  great  white  Pyrenean  dog  of 
the  place  on  guard  among  the  little  harvest,  and  went 
down  the  hillside,  pursued  by  the  blessings  and  the  thanks 
of  the  conscript's  mother.  "  Gratitude  is  a  lively  sense 
of  favors  to  come;"  and  she  knew  that  she  must  look  to 
him  to  carry  it  for  grinding  to  the  water-mill  in  the  vil- 
lage down  below,  where  the  foaming  mountain  river  grew 
quieter,  and  watered  peacefully  green  stretches  of  meadow- 
land. 

There,  in  the  valley,  beneath  his  feet,  not  more  than  a 
league  off,  were  the  towers  of  the  chateau,  and  the  wide, 
dark  masses  of  park  and  forest  woodland ;  with  lakes, 
and  islets,  and  rocks,  and  streams  amid  them,  and  in  their 
front  the  glorious  panorama  of  the  mountains. 

From  the  center  tower  of  the  pile  was  floating  the 
scarlet  standard  of  the  Lira;  with  the  golden  hawk,  with 
outstretched  wings,  of  their  insignia,  glittering  in  the 
rays  of  the  setting  sun. 

He  descended  the  hillside  with  the  lithe  swiftness  of 
the  mountaineer,  and  passed  through  the  scattered  home- 
steads of  the  little  hamlet,  that  were  chiefly  gathered 
about  the  side  of  the  river,  and  had  their  white  walls 
hidden  under  thickets  of  myrtle  and  olive. 

The  day's  toil  was  over :  the  young  men  and  maidens 
were  playing  the  rough  wrestling  games  of  the  district, 
or  dancing  the  Moresco  dances,  that  still  linger  there  as 
the  sign  of  the  Saracenic  days  of  yore :  the  old  women 
were  sitting  spinning,  nodding  their  gray  heads  together, 
amid  the  babble  of  their  grandchildren  ;  they  were  all 
very  poor;  they  all  led  simple,  homely,  patriarchal  lives; 
but  they  were  happy,  their  youth  had  the  gay  grace,  and 
their  old  age  had  the  smiling  content,  that  belong  to 
France  alone. 

He  scattered  among  the  children  a  basketful  of  cherries 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         301 

that  he  had  bought  on  the  hillside,  of  an  old  woman  who 
was  seeing  her  ruddy  store  likely  to  rot  away  for  want  of 
a  buyer  in  that  lonely  place:  then  he  went  from  one  group 
to  another  with  cheerful  words,  as  his  habitude  was,  and 
gathered  the  wishes  and  wants  of  the  little  community. 
Both  were  humble  enough: — a  goat  for  the  sake  of  its 
milk;  a  hank  of  flax  for  the  spinning;  a  purchaser  for 
the  overripe  melons;  a  necklace  of  priest-blessed  beads; 
a  smile  from  the  bishop  as  he  passed  on  his  mule  through 
this,  his  far-distant,  and  rarely  visited  flock  ;  an  acre  more 
ground  to  some  young  lover's  small  patrimony,  so  that  he 
could  wed  where  he  loved :  all  these  in  the  little  world 
played  the  part  that  crowns,  and  honors,  and  riches,  and 
fair  fame,  and  fierce  passion  played  in  the  great  world 
unknown  to  them. 

One  young  child,  beautiful  as  some  medieval  painter's 
seraph,  with  that  angelic  spiritual  regard  which  belongs 
to  southern  climes,  pouted  with  a  pretty  scorn  at  her 
playmate's  cherries,  and  came  and  leaned  in  grave  dis- 
dain over  her  mother's  knee. 

"Dost  thou  not  care  for  the  fruit,  Angelique ?"  asked 
the  mother,  reproachfully,  smiling  the  while  at  Tricotrin, 
who  stood  by. 

The  child's  fair  face  clouded  with  petulant  disdain. 

"  No  !   1  want  more  gold  toys,  mother  !" 

"Ah!"  said  the  woman,  half  smiling  still,  but  sadly. 
"Thy  chain  has  spoiled  all  thy  pleasures!  A  week  ago, 
look  you,  our  duchess  up  yonder  saw  Angelique  as  she 
passed,  and  laughed  and  tossed  her  a  gold  jewel  oft'  her 
wrist.  It  just  fitted  the  baby's  throat;  but  it  has  made 
her  so  vain,  there  is  no  telling  how  to  please  her  now." 

Angelique  lifted  proudly  her  little  fair  throat  with  the 
gold  links  glitteriug  round  it,  her  eyes  shining  and  rap- 
turous. 

"I  will  not  play  with  them  /"  she  said,  tossing  her  bead 
toward  her  playmates.  "They  have  only  strings  of  yew 
berries  or  dried  peas  ! — and  she  never  called  them  beau- 
tiful !" 

"Hush,  hush!  A  careless  word  does  mischief,"  mur- 
mured her  mother,  deprecatingly,  to  Tricotrin.    "To  give 

31 


362  TRICOTRIN, 


it  to  the  child  was  very  good,  very  generous,  but  the 
gifts  of  the  great  are " 

"Honey  that  moulds  into  poison!  Your  Angelique 
was  happy  in  her  necklace  of  yew  berries,  aDd  now,  the 
lust  of  gold  is  grown,  and  gold  does  not  grow  like  the 
yews.     She  gives  much, — your  Chatelaine?" 

An  old  woman  —  very  old  —  lifted  blind  patient  eyes 
where  she  sat  under  the  chestnuts. 

"She  saw  me  sitting  in  the  sun,  in  the  park,  the  other 
day,  and  she  spoke  softly  to  me,  and  she  shook  her  purse 
into  my  lap, — I  counted  twelve  pieces,  and  Vevette  found 
them  every  one  of  gold!     She  is  an  angel." 

"Caprice!"  muttered  an  old  charcoal-burner.  "Only  a 
caprice,  like  the  chain  to  little  Ange.  Her  stewards  tax 
us  for  every  rotten  twig  of  wood,  till  we  can  scarce  keep 
body  and  soul  together.     She  is  a  tyrant." 

"We  have  only  gourds  and  a  stray  onion  to  chew," 
muttered  a  herdsman,  "and  her  dogs  eat  the  fat  of  the 
land.     "  She  is  an  aristocrat." 

"Her  flowers  have  fires  all  winter,  and  we  shiver  and 
starve." 

"  Her  life  is  a  fairy  tale ;  how  should  she  know  what 
it  is  to  have  only  a  knob  of  black  bread  once  in  twenty- 
four  hours  ?" 

"  She  spends  all  her  substance  in  Paris;  and  then  her 
foresters  grudge  us  a  quail  we  have  killed  with  a  stone!" 

"  Her  outriders  lamed  Bertrand's  child  for  life,  and  she 
was  laughing  in  her  carriage, — she  never  saw,  she  never 
heard." 

"  Her  fetes  cost  a  million  francs  a  night,  every  night  of 
last  week,  and  they  say  each  tree  that  was  lit  up  cost  as 
much  as  would  keep  a  man  for  a  twelvemonth." 

"But  it  was  beautiful;  we  could  see  the  light  here!" 
pleaded  a  handsome  young  goatherd.  "  And  she  has  a 
face  like  God's  own  people  !" 

"  She  gave  me  my  chain  !"  cried  little  Angelique. 

"And  my  twelve  pieces!"  muttered  the  blind  woman. 

"All  that  will  not  put  a  slice  of  beef  in  our  pots,  with 
the  garlic  ;  nor  yet  mend  Bertrand's  boy's  broken  knee," 
said  the  charcoal-burner,  gloomily,  in  summary  and  con- 
clusion. 


THE  STORY    OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         3G3 

Tricotrin,  standing  under  the  chestnut,  heard  in  silence; 
then  wished  them  good-night,  and  walked  on  as  Mistigri 
leaped  to  his  shoulder. 

"Ah!  little  one,"  he  murmured  to  her.  "How  the 
hotbed  of  the  world  has  heated  and  strengthened  the 
faults  and  the  follies  1 — yet  the  higher  nature  lives  still, 
and  the  gift  goes  to  the  child,  the  gold  pieces  to  the  blind 
woman.  "Will  it  ever  wake  wholly  and  reign  again? 
Yes,  perhaps: — if  ever  she  love!" 

Meanwhile,  under  the  chestnuts,  the  blithe  talk  of  the 
aged  women  grew  silent:  the  little  Angelique  pouted 
apart,  vexed  with  herself  for  having  scorned  her  share  of 
the  cherries  ;  the  charcoal-burner  sat  moodily  musing  of 
things  of  the  old  Revolution  of  which  his  grandsire  had 
told  him;  the  young  herdsman  would  not  join  in  the 
Sarabande,  but  wandered  away  thinking  of  the  face  •'  like 
one  of  God's  people,"  that  belonged  to  his  proud  Cha- 
telaine, and  gazing  wistfully  upward  at  the  lights  that 
began  to  gleam  through  the  wood  of  the  chateau. 

The  brighl  and  Light-hearted  content  and  communion 
of  their  lives  had  been  dimmed  and  been  broken  : — the 
world  had  sent  amid  them  the  visible  presence  of  its 
devil-empress,  wealth. 

He,  himself,  went  onward  through  the  valley,  through 
the  deep  belt  of  the  woods,  through  the  avenues  of  the 
park.  The  whole  front  of  the  antique  building  was  lighted, 
and  the  painted  oriels  gleamed  ruby,  and  amber,  and  soft 
brown,  in  the  dusky  evening,  through  the  green  screen  of 
foliage. 

The  fragrance  of  the  orange  alleys,  and  of  the  acres  of 
flowers,  was  heavy  on  the  air;  there  was  the  sound  of 
music  borne   down   the  low   southerly  wind;  here   and 

therethrough  the  1 ghs  was  the  dainty  -'listen  of  gliding 

silks: — it  was  such  a  scene  as  once  belonged  to  the  ter- 
races and  gardens  of  Versailles. 

From  beyond  the  myrtle  fence  and  gilded  railings  which 
severed  the  park  from  the  pleasaunce,  enough  could  be 
scon,  enough  heard,  of  the  brilliant  revelry  within  to  tell 
of  its  extravagance,  and  its  elegance,  in  the  radiance  that 
streamed  from  all  the  illumined  avenues. 

He  stood  and  looked  long;  hearing  the  faint  echo  of 


364  TRICOTRIN, 

the  music,  seeing  the  effulgence  of  the  light  through  the 
dark  myrtle  barrier. 

A  very  old  crippled  peasant,  searching  in  the  grass  for 
truffles,  with  a  little  dog,  stole  timidly  up  and  looked  too. 

"  How  can  it  feel,  to  live  like  that  t"  he  asked,  in  a 
wistful  tremulous  voice. 

Tricotrin  did  not  hear :  his  hand  was  grasped  on  one 
of  the  gilded  rails  with  a  nervous  force  as  from  bodily 
pain. 

The  old  truffle-gatherer,  with  his  little  white  dog  pant- 
ing at  his  feet,  crossed  himself  as  he  peered  through  the 
myrtle  screen. 

"God!"  he  muttered,  "how  strange  it  seems  that 
people  are  there  who  never  once  knew  what  it  was  to 
want  bread,  and  to  find  it  nowhere,  though  the  lands  all 
teemed  with  harvest !  They  never  feel  hungry,  or  cold, 
or  hot,  or  tired,  or  thirsty  :  they  never  feel  their  bones 
ache,  and  their  throat  parch,  and  their  entrails  gnaw : — 
these  people  ought  not  to  get  to  heaven,  they  have  it  on 
earth  !" 

Tricotrin  heard  at  last ;  he  turned  his  head  and  looked 
down  on  the  old  man's  careworn  hollow  face. 

" 'Verily,  they  have  their  reward,'  you  mean?  Nay, 
that  is  a  crael  religion — which  would  excruciate  hereafter 
those  who  enjoy  now  1  Judge  them  not ;  in  their  laurel 
crowns  there  is  full  often  twisted  a  serpent.  The  hunger 
of  the  body  is  bad  indeed,  but  the  hunger  of  the  mind  is 
worse  perhaps ;  and  from  that  they  suffer,  because  from 
every  fulfilled  desire  springs  the  pain  of  a  fresh  satiety." 

The  truffle-hunter,  wise  in  his  peasant-fashion,  gazed 
wistfully  up  at  the  face  above  him,  half  comprehending 
the  answer. 

"  It  may  be  so,"  he  murmured.  "  But  then — they  have 
enjoyed!  Ah,  Christ!  that  is  what  I  envy  them.  Now 
we, — we  die,  starved  amid  abundance  ;  we  see  the  years 
go,  and  the  sun  never  shines  once  in  them  ;  and  all  we 
have  is  a  hope — a  hope  that  may  be  cheated  at  last.  For 
none  have  come  back  from  the  grave  to  tell  us  whether 
that  fools  us  as  well." 

So  saying,  he  heavily  shouldered  his  creel  of  truffles, 
and  turned  away  sadly. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         305 

Tricotrin  turned  also,  and  laid  his  hand  on  the  rush 
basket  and  swung  it  over  his  own  back. 

"'I  will  carry  it  home  for  you,"  he  said  to  the  feeble 
old  cripple.  "  We  will  have  some  more  words  together  : 
and  you  shall  give  me  a  night's  lodging." 

"  Willingly !  But  I  have  only  a  wattle  hut  in  the  for- 
est ! " 

"  What  matter  ?  I  can  sleep  outside  it,  under  the  pines. 
I  have  done  that  oftentimes.  There  is  no  more  fragrant 
bed-chamber, — not  even  where  great  ladies  rest." 

lie  glanced  back  at  the  distant  gardens  where  the 
lights,  and  the  music,  and  the  guests  of  the  evening  festi- 
val were. 

"She  is  happy:  what  matter  that  she  forgets?"  he 
thought,  as  he  went  back  with  the  old  woodsman  into  the 
shadow  of  the  pine  and  the  chestnut  forests. 

The  little  hut  stood  hidden  in  one  of  the  deepest  re- 
cesses of  the  great  sylvan  growth  which,  watered  by 
innumerable  subterranean  branches  of  the  river,  that  was 
fed  with  every  spring-tide  by  the  melted  snows  of  the 
mountains,  resisted  the  withering  scorch  of  the  southern 
suns.  It  was  a  small  rough  place,  bare  as  a  hermit's  cell, 
and  strewn  with  dried  water-rushes;  truffles  were  scarce 
in  the  district,  and  for  them  there  were  swifter  and  abler 
seekers  than  the  cripple  of  eighty  years. 

lie  had  been  born  in  the  Lira  forests,  and  had  lived  in 
them  all  his  days,  first  as  a  charcoal-burner,  then,  when 
his  strength  failed  him,  and  he  had  broken  his  knee  down 
a  ravine,  by  seeking  for  the  dainty  root  that  savors  the 
rich  man's  banquet.  Of  any  world  lying  beyond  them, 
he  had  but  the  vague  conception  of  a  child:  days  and 
ni-lits,  and  months  and  years  had  all  gone  by  with  him 
under  the  broad  fans  of  the  pines  and  the  chestnuts,  the 
seasons  only  measured  to  him  by  t  he  budding  of  t  lie  rosy 
leaves  and  the  falling  of  the  golden  cones.  Yet  he  was 
patient,  ami  laborious,  and  wise  in  his  own  way,  like  one 
of  the  gentle  beavers  that  built  their  wooden  cities  in  the 
lake  beside  his  home. 

"You  have  always  lived  alone?"  Tricotrin  asked  him, 
as  he  sat  at  the  hut  door,  smoking,  as  the  moon  rose  and 
silvered  all  the  delicate  colonnades  of  the  pine  stems. 

31* 


3G6  TR1C0TRIN, 

"  Not  always." 

"  Not  always  ?    How  is  it  then  that  you  arc  so  now  ?" 

"How  does  it  always  happen  when  we  outlive  those 
we  love  ?     Men  are  foolish  who  grow  old." 

"  Rather, — men  are  foolish  who  hang  on  other  lives  ! 
You  had  children  once  ?" 

The  old  man  came  forward  into  the  moonlight,  and  sat 
himself  down  on  a  broken  tree-root ;  he  was  very  grate- 
ful to  the  stranger  who  had  pitied  him,  he  was  glad  to 
break  his  accustomed  loneliness  and  silence  by  speech. 

"I  had  one  child;  and  I  had  a  young  wife  whom  I 
loved  well.  How  many  years  is  it  since  then  ?  I  cannot 
tell :  another  life,  surely, — it  looks  so  long  ago.  Madelon 
lived  here, — yes,  here.  It  seems  strange  to  think  of  now. 
She  was  so  pretty,  and  so  brown,  and  so  blithe ;  just  like 
one  of  the  robins.  And  she  was  always  singing ;  some- 
times I  hear  her  voice  among  the  leaves  still.  We  buried 
her  under  that  pine, — the  one  with  a  cross  cut  out  on  the 
bark, — but  I  always  fancy  myself  that  her  soul  passed 
into  one  of  the  birds.  She  was  always  fond  of  them; 
they  were  always  fluttering  about  her.  Is  it  possible, 
think  you  ?" 

He  did  not  wait  for  an  answer :  he  did  not  wish  his 
fancy  disturbed. 

"Madelon  had  a  little  daughter  ;  I  did  not  care  so  much 
for  her.  It  seemed  cruel  that  when  she  died  that  life 
stolen  from  hers  lived  on  ? — you  know  what  it  is  that  I 
mean?  Well, — the  child, — Madelon,  too,  she  was  named, 
— grew  up ;  and  I  was  very  gentle  with  her  because  she 
had  no  mother.  They  said  in  the  forest  here,  and  up  at 
the  chateau,  that  she  was  much  lovelier  than  my  Madelon 
had  been :  it  might  be  so, — she  was  not  so  fair  in  my  sight. 
The  child  was  always  happy,  singing,  too,  making  chains 
of  berries  and  flowers,  and  looking  at  her  own  face  as 
she  saw  it  in  the  lake  water.  The  great  people  up  at  the 
chateau — this  was  forty  years  ago,  and  more,  what  I 
talk  of  now,  and  they  were  very  gay  and  brilliant  there 
then,  just  as  Miladi  is  now — took  a  fancy  to  her,  and 
she  went  away  with  one  of  the  princesses,  in  her  service 
they  told  me.  I  was  very  loth, — I  was  all  alone, — and 
she  had  the  voice  of  my  Madelon.     But  she  wept,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         367 

fretted,  and  raved,  and  said  she  should  die  in  the  forest : 
what  could  I  do?  She  was  just  like  a  bird  in  a  cage; 
and  if  I  had  kept  the  cage  closed  she  would  have  given 
me  no  song,  and  men  would  have  said  I  was  cruel.  So 
she  went, — pretty  volatile  thing.  Went  where  ? — that  is 
what  I  cannot  tell.  She  was  as  blithe  in  her  flight  as 
any  young  pigeon.  I  suppose  she  was  happy.  The  sea- 
sons went  by;  those  chestnuts  four  times  were  all  pink 
with  their  buds  ;  four  times  the  brown  fruit  dropped  out 
of  their  pods.  I  never  saw  Madelon  all  that  time.  Day 
after  day  I  went  to  the  chateau  ;  I  could  hear  nothing  : 
she  was  with  the  princess,  they  said.  I  suppose  the 
world  is  very  large,  is  it  not?  By-and-by  that  great  lady 
came  again  to  stay  at  the  chateau  ;  I  saw  her  face  as  she 
rode  past  one  day.  By  dint  of  much  prayer  and  entreaty 
I  got  to  see  her, — it  was  hard  work  fur  weeks  to  do  so, — 
when  I  spoke  with  her  she  could  not  understand-  me  ; 
those  great  people  have  a  different  tongue  to  ours ;  but 
she  was  very  gentle,  and  I  could  see  she  grieved  for  me, 
and  she  told  me  through  her  servant  that  she  had  lost 
sight  of  Madelon  some  years :  that  the  girl  had  been 
with  her  but  a  brief  season,  and  then  had  grown  bad, — 
bad, — bad, — and  had  gone  to  be  a  rich,  wicked  woman, 
with  the  gold  of  the  nobles.  I  do  not  know  what  I  did, 
what  I  said,  I  have  forgotten ;  it  is  long  ago.  But  they 
told  me  I  fell  down  in  some  fit;  and  it  is  true  that  after 
that  time  I  was  never  strong,  and  my  left  arm,  I  could 
not  lift  it  again.  I  never  blamed  the  man  that  misused 
Madelon,  look  you ;  if  a  woman-child  have  no  heart  and 
no  soul,  and  longs  to  be  vile  because  she  is  dull  in  her 
home,  why, — she  is  like  the  nightshade  flower,  she  will 
bear  poison  let  you  plant  her  where  you  will.  I  never 
blamed  him;  but  I  was  glad  thai  her  mother  was  dead. 
And  —do  you  know  one  thing? — the  birds  have  never 
sung  blithely  since." 

■•  Never  to  you,"  Tricotrin  answered  him  softly.  "  And 
you  have  he. nil  no  more  of  her?'' 

"  No  more.  She  never  came  back.  "Why  should  she  ? 
T  am  only  an  old  lame  man,  and  for  the  birds  and  the 
trees  and  the  (lowers  the  girl  never  eared.  She  was  not 
like  my  Madelon,  who  loved  them.     Yet  I  am  wrong  to 


3G8  TRICOTRIN, 

say  I  never  heard  again:  I  did  hear  once,  twenty  or 
more  years  after.  There  came  a  letter  to  me  ;  I  cannot 
read,  I  took  it  to  the  cure  down  in  the  village  yonder,  not 
the  one  that  is  there  now, — the  dead  one.  He  read  it 
out  to  me  :  it  was  from  a  sailor  somewhere  in  what  they 
call  the  Riviera.  It  was  a  simple  kindly  letter,  to  tell 
me  that  he  was  going  to  wed  a  pi*etty  child ;  who  he 
thought  was  my  grandchild  by  what  he  knew  of  her 
mother's  history.  The  letter  had  been  ten  months  in 
finding  me;  it  was  ill  addressed;  the  priest  replied  to  it 
for  me,  but  I  never  heard  again.  So  whether  it  was  true 
or  not  I  cannot  tell." 

"Might  I  see  it?" 

"  Surely.     I  have  kept  it  by  me." 

He  went  into  his  hut,  and  after  some  minutes  absence, 
returned  with  an  old  yellow  paper. 

"Here  it  is.     You  can  read,  I  dare  say?" 

Tricotrin  took  it ;  and  read  :  it  was  barely  a  decipher- 
able scrawl,  very  clumsily  and  laboriously  written ;  pa- 
thetic through  its  gentle  and  homely  simplicity.  It  set 
forth  in  few  words  that  the  writer  was  about  to  become 
the  husband  of  an  orphan  girl  who  was  known  to  be  the 
bastard-daughter  of  one  of  the  nobles  of  France,  though 
brought  up  among  the  fishing  people  ;  it  went  on  to  say 
that  her  mother  had  never  been  seen  on  that  shore,  but, 
dying  lately  in  Paris,  had  bequeathed  her  some  jewels,  a 
little  gold,  the  declaration  that  she  was  her  offspring  by  a 
princely  lover,  and  the  injunction  to  endeavor  to  learn 
whether  an  old  man  of  the  name  of  Aubin  Ralcor  was 
still  living  in  the  forests  of  Lira;  this  was  signed  Maclelon 
Ralcor,  commonly  known  as  Pearl  Rosalba,  and  had  been 
dictated  from  the  dying  bed  of  the  testatrix.  The  sailor 
also  wrote  that  he  would  die  of  starvation  ere  ever  he 
touched  the  store  of  gold  and  gems  ;  but  that  he  earnestly 
desired  to  seek  out,  and  be  as  a  son  to  the  old  man  Aubin 
Ralcor,  whom  he  supposed  the  grandsire  of  his  beloved: 
he  subscribed  himself  in  kindly  appearing  phrase — Jean 
Bruno. 

The  letter  fell  from  Tricotrin's  hand  upon  the  mossy 
ground  :  he  sat  in  silence,  gazing  out  down  the  silvered 
avenue  of  pines:  this  homely  tragedy  touched  him  at 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         369 

every  turn,  and  moved  him  with  its  deep-rooted  sadness 
that  had  darkened  three  generations.  What  cruel  play  of 
fate's  caprices  had  thus  lodged  the  peace  of  these  men  of 
simple  soul,  and  honest  love,  in  the  hands  of  these  women, 
whose  impulses  led  them  from  innocence,  whose  instincts 
launched  them  toward  vice:  —  who  saw  only  a  weari- 
some sameness  in  the  passion  that  clung  to  them  too 
fondly ;  who  had  no  other  thought  than  to  cheat  it,  be- 
tray it,  forsake  it?  Born  from  the  simple  peasant-girl 
whose  grave  was  made  under  the  cross-marked  pine,  they 
had  uprisen,  like  upas-trees,  destroying  all  who  rested 
near  them  :  the  old  eternal  mystery  of  guilt  begot  of  inno- 
cence, of  Commotlus  begot  of  Antoninus. 

He  folded  up  the  page  and  gave  it  back  to  Ralcor. 
What  avail  was  it  to  deal  him  the  fresh  pain  of  such  a 
story  as  the  sole  one  he  could  tell  of  Bruno's  wife — of 
Coriolis  ? 

"  A  well-meant,  tender  letter,"  he  said.  "  Did  you 
never  hear  more  from  him  ?" 

"Never.  The  priest  answered  for  me,  as  I  say,  for  I 
would  willingly  have  seen  Madelon's  daughter.  But 
whether  he  ever  had  the  reply  or  not  I  cannot  tell.  No 
Dews  came  from  him.  It  is  best  so,  perhaps.  I  would 
rather  be  left  alone  with  the  forest.  It  knows  me  as  they 
never  could  do." 

"And  is  there  nothing  you  desire  then?" 

"No.     I  shall  be  glad  to  die,  that  is  all." 

"And  leave  your  forest?" 

"I  shall  not  leave  it,  They  will  bury  me  there  by  the 
pine.  Tt  will  be  the  same  thing,  only  quieter.  To  live 
hardly  is  all  well  enough  when  one  is  young; — only  a 
crust — what  matter?  One  has  the  spring  of  the  deer, 
the  heart  of  the  eagle,  the  speed  of  the  hound.  But 
when  one  is  old,  —  it  is  not  worth  while.  The  mill 
takes  so  much  labor  to  turn;  and  so  little  corn  comes 
from  it.*' 

With  these  words  he  rose,  and  bade  his  stranger  friend 
good-night,  and  went  within,  and  fell  upon  his  knees  before 
his  Utile  wooden  crucifix,  roughly  made  from  two  pine- 
branches,  and  prayed  with  the  guileless  faith  of  child- 
hood;— half  senseless,  half  sublime. 


370  TRICOTRIN, 

Tricotrin  remained  without,  in  the  bright  calm  moon- 
light of  the  forest  aisle. 

The  belling  of  the  deer  sounded  down  the  wind ;  the 
soft  owls  flitted  through  the  dusk,  the  glow-worms  glim- 
mered underneath  the  moss :  and  far  beyond  across  the 
woods  in  the  great  chateau,  the  light,  the  laughter,  the 
dance,  the  song,  the  love-jest  passed  the  hours  away  as 
though  there  were  no  such  memories  as  crime,  or  grief,  or 
shame,  on  earth. 

"She  is  happy,"  he  said,  half  aloud,  to  little  Mistigri, 
as  he  looked  at  the  far-off  towers  of  the  mighty  place,  and 
mused  at  the  tragedy  hidden  beneath  the  simple  and  ob- 
scure lives  which  on  their  surface  bore  only  the  rough 
illiterate  homeliness  of  a  sailor's  and  a  woodman's  toil. 
"  She  is  happy  ;  what  matter  the  rest  ?  She  would  have 
gone  to  the  evil  of  these  women,  Mistigri,  if  she  had 
stayed  with  us ;  not  for  love  of  the  sin  or  the  shame,  but 
for  love  of  the  '  great  world '  she  craved,  for  escape  from 
the  peasant-life  she  detested :  she  would  have  been  like 
Madelon,  like  Coriolis.  True  :  there  is  scant  worth  in  an 
honor  only  reared  into  growth  under  the  hothouse  shade 
of  fair  circumstance.  But  those  frail  things  of  woman- 
hood are  no  stronger  than  flowers  :  they  grow  straightly, 
or  crookedly,  as  they  blossom  in  fresh  air,  or  foul ;  and  if 
we  only  care  for  a  rose  we  lead  it  up  to  the  sunlight,  we 
do  not  stamp  it  down  into  the  swamp  in  its  bud.  I  was 
a  coward,  perhaps  ;  I  feared  that  her  life  should  ever  re- 
proach me.  If  we  had  seen  her  fallen,  wretched,  cursing 
men,  and  by  them  cursed,  what  remorse  we  should  have 
felt — you  and  I — Mistigri  ?     And  yet " 

And  yet  ? 

Were  the  pomp,  and  the  pride,  and  the  careless  glory, 
and  the  graceful  contempt,  of  the  life  that  she  led,  so 
much  nobler  after  all  than  the  sin  of  Madelon,  than  the 
shame  of  Coriolis  ?  Was  not  their  root  the  same  passion 
though  their  blossom  was  triumph  where  the  other  fruit 
had  been  bitterness  ?  The  one  grew  as  the  palm,  whose 
stately  height  and  lordly  crown  of  greenest  leaf  towered 
in  perpetual  summer,  the  idol  of  every  passer-by  :  the 
other  grew  as  the  belladonna,  whose  purple  brilliancy  of 
flower  turned  into  the  poison  that  bore  death  to  all  toyers 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         3?1 

with  it,  cursed  aloud  as  men  left  it  on  the  highway  to  be 
trodden  down  by  each  strange  foot:  but  they  sprang  alike 
from  the  same  soil  of  ambitious  desire,  they  were  alike 
fanned  by  the  same  winds  of  impatient  and  feverish 
longing. 

The  one  carried  a  green  crown  of  honor ;  the  other  but 
acrid  berries  of  slaughter  ;  yet  the  sap  feeding  their  veins 
was  the  same — it  was  the  passion  of  the  feminine  instinct 
for  pleasure,  for  gain,  and  for  homage. 

The  passion  that  has  cursed  the  earth  since  the  prime- 
val age ;  as  the  Hebrew  poets  saw,  even  in  the  days  of 
the  world's  youth,  when  they  created  its  parallel  and 
parable  in  the  metaphorical  poem  of  Eve,  in  the  allegori- 
cal picture  of  Eden. 


CHAPTER  XXXYII. 

At  noon  the  following  day  he  went  up  the  vast  flight 
of  steps  that  led  from  the  gardens  to  the  doors  of  the 
magnificent  feudal  pile,  palace  and  fortress  in  one,  that 
crowned  the  brow  of  the  hill  throned  amid  its  darkling 
pine  woods. 

"The  Duchess  de  Lira  is  within?"  he  asked  of  a  group 
of  footmen,  clad  in  scarlet  aud  white;  and  gold,  lounging 
inside  the  courts,  that  were  like  the  great  courts  of  Ver- 
sailles. 

One  of  them  raised  his  insolent  head  with  alow  laugh. 

"  The  duchess  left  here  early  to-day  ;  she  is  gone  to  the 
royal  marriage  at  Madrid." 

Ilr  turned  and  passed  away  down  the  great  marble 
stairs,  withoul  answer. 

'What  could  that  fellow  want  with  our  Jady?"  said 
the  footman  to  his  peers.  "If  she  had  been  here  she 
would  never  have  seen  him — a  strolling  player  with  a 
fiddle  at  his  hack.'' 


312  TEICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

The  snow  fell  once  more  thickly  over  the  roofs  and 
streets  of  the  City  of  Paris. 

In  the  little  by-lane  of  the  Latin  quarter  wherein  Mere 
Rose  had  dwelt,  all  the  quaint  angles  and  gables  and  jut- 
ting angles  were  white  with  the  fallen  flakes ;  all  the 
leaded  dusky  panes  were  glittering  yet  dim  with  frost ; 
the  empty  linnet's  cage  had  icicles  around  it,  in  lieu  of  the 
'lime  or  the  lilac  bough  that  had  used  to  hang  above  it.  Mere 
Rose  was  dead  ;  and  the  linnet  was  dead  also.  The  case- 
ments of  the  coffee-house  were  closed  against  the  sharp- 
ness of  the  cold ;  there  were  no  music  in  the  streets,  no 
laugh  on  the  crisp  air,  for  the  populace  of  this  quarter 
were  exceeding  poor,  and  suffered  greatly  in  the  winter- 
time ;  across  the  road  at  the  window  where  the  grisette 
had  been  wont  to  sit,  sewing  her  rose-colored  skirt  for  a 
students'  ball,  the  shutters  were  fastened,  the  owners  of 
the  dwelling  were  gone  to  prison  for  debts  that  they 
owed  for  bread  and  vegetables. 

Though  it  was  the  first  morning  of  a  new  year,  there 
were  no  mirth,  no  gayety,  no  greetings,  little  movement, 
in  the  passage  way :  there  were  only  a  ragged  child  raking 
in  the  snow  for  bits  of  offal,  and  a  fat,  pampered  cat,  the 
savage  pet  of  a  butchei*,  watching  to  seize  a  bird,  whose 
half- frozen,  heavily- weighted  wings  dragged  it  slowly 
through  the  descending  snow. 

Tricotrin  stood  at  his  garret  lattice  and  looked  down 
awhile  upon  the  desolation.  It  was  the  day  of  the  city's 
uttermost  rejoicing;   but  there  was  no  rejoicing  here. 

Even  the  elastic  mirth  of  the  national  temper  was  killed 
under  the  cold  and  the  hunger,  that  came  with  a  season 
of  almost  unexampled  severity. - 

Like  the  attic  of  Teufelsdrockh,  "  in  the  highest  house 
of  the  Wahn2rasse,"  it  was  his  watch-tower  whence  he 
"  could  behold  all  the  life  circulation  of  the  city."     With 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         373 

Teufelsdrdckh  he  could  say,  "  I  look  down  into  that  wasp 
nest,  or  beehive,  and  witness  their  wax-laying,  and  honey- 
making,  and  poison  brewing,  and  choking  by  sulphur. 
From  the  palace  esplanade  where  music  plays  while  se- 
rene highness  is  pleased  to  eat  his  victuals,  down  the  low 
lane,  where,  in  her  door-sill,  the  aged  widow,  knitting 
for  a  thin  livelihood,  sits  to  feel  the  afternoon  sun,  I  see 
it  all" 

Saw  it — with  that  far-reaching,  clear,  penetrating  vision 
which  belongs  only  to  that  mind  which  men,  for  want  of 
a  better  name,  have  called  the  poet's ;  which  by  the  infini- 
tude of  sympathy  attains  to  the  infinitude  of  comprehen- 
sion ;  which  understands  all,  because  it  feels  all  things; 
and  which  withholds  the  largeness  of  its  justice,  and  the 
insight  of  its  tenderness,  as  little  from  the  palace  as  from 
the  hovel,  from  the  throes  of  ambition  as  from  the  travail 
of  poverty. 

He  looked  out,  from  his  attic  window,  upon  the  snowy 
morning: — the  ragged  child  fled  away  with  a  scream  as 
an  old  tin  pot  was  flung  at  his  head  from  a  doorway 
near,  with  a  shower  of  curses ;  the  cat  bounced  on  the 
frozen,  fluttering  bird,  that  gave  its  life  up  with  scarcely 
an  effort  at  resistance. 

A  little  way  farther  on,  the  child,  having  been  punished 
while  innocent,  deemed  it  as  well  to  be  guilty,  and  snatched 
a  roll  from  a  baker's  stall  unperceived,  and  darted  out  or 
Bight  with  his  theft  ;  the  cat  having  been  successful  in 
killing  her  prey,  choked  herself  with  t  he  broken  bones  and 
bloody  feathers,  yet  beat  off  with  tooth  and  talon  a  weakly 
kitten  thai  crept  timidly  near  her  for  the  scraps  of  ruffled 
plumage  that  wen-  left. 

"  So  the  year  begins  I"  he  thought,  "with  two  fables 
set  in  motion, — the  famine  thai  is  turned  to  guilt  by  mi- 
jusl  punishment,  the  greed  that  success  makes  savage 
ami  venomous.  Between  them  they  make  up  the  world! 
A  ml  here,  one  pities  the  lad,  one  is  enraged  with  the  cat, 
Inn  neither  our  pity  nor  out  rage  will  make  up  the  losl 
loaf  to  the  baker,  or  the  losl  life  to  the  bird.  There  is 
the  toughesl  puzzle  of  the  problem.  Neither  our  com- 
passion nor  our  anger  are  of  much  use  after  all." 

The  half-entangled  metaphorical   fancies  drifted  idly 

32 


3U  TRICOTRIN, 

through  his  brain,  as  the  baker  discovered  his  missing  roll 
with  outcries  and  lamentations,  and  the  cat  dealt  its  feeble 
fellow  a  final  stroke  that  sent  it  shrieking  into  a  cellar. 

Thus  the  year  commenced  on  the  chill,  bleak,  biting 
morning  of  its  first  day. 

He  turned  from  the  lattice  as  a  small,  pale,  black-eyed 
maiden  brought  him  his  coffee  and  roll.  He  gave  her  a 
little  piece  of  silver. 

"Here,  Flore — take  that  to  your  friend,  Rene,  over  the 
way.  Tell  him  I  saw  a  lad  run  off  with  one  of  his  loaves 
just  this  moment ;  and  I  know  he  can  ill  afford  to  lose  it 
with  wheat  at  the  price  it  is,  and  his  two  old  people  to 
keep  all  the  winter  through." 

The  girl  nodded,  and  went  off,  willingly  and  with  a 
bright  laugh  :  the  baker  was  a  favorite  with  her,  a  good- 
hearted  laborious  youth  from  the  Cevennes,  who  had 
hard  work  to  maintain,  singlehanded,  two  helpless  aged 
women,  one  blind,  the  other  paralyzed, — his  mother  and 
grandmother,  who,  if  ever  his  breadshop  should  be  closed, 
would  be  turned  out  upon  public  charity.  Rene  loved 
the  black  eyes  of  the  little  Flore  right  well :  but  there 
was  no  chance  that  he  could  many  her,  while  those  two 
old  women  should  sit  on  either  side  of  his  stove,  needing 
all  the  warmth  its  scanty  fuel  could  yield.  He  got  no 
gratitude,  and  no  thanks  for  it :  the  two  women  muttered 
and  crooned  against  him,  day  and  night,  because  the  room 
was  so  small,  the  tiled  floor  so  cold,  the  coffee  so  rough, 
the  sugar  so  scanty,  the  bread  so  stale,  the  soup  so  flavor- 
less: but  he  went  on  uncomplainingly  with  the  execution 
of  his  duty  to  them,  in  that  almost  unconscious  self-sacri- 
fice which  is  one  of  the  best  and  purest  things  found  under 
the  "sulphur-chokings"  of  the  lives  of  the  poor. 

When  the  girl  was  gone,  Tricotrin  broke  off  a  great 
piece  of  his  own  roll,  and  scattered  it  in  crumbs  upon  his 
window-sill,  and  on  the  stone  ledge  that  ran  beneath  it : 
the  robins  and  the  sparrows  soon  fluttered  to  the  feast. 

"There!"  he  said  to  Mistigri,  with  a  laugh.  "  Do  you 
see,  little  one  ?  That  is  just  about  the  measure  of  all  we 
social  philosophers  ever  contribute  to  the  redressing  of  the 
world's  wrong-doings — save  one  starving  songster  out  of 
a  million,  and  amend  one  theft  out  of  ten  thousand  mil- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         375 

lions  I  A  fine  thing  to  crow  over  and  be  proud  of,  truly! 
Perhaps  the  cat  is  the  wiser  moralist  of  all  of  us,  after  all, 
— •'  I  am  fat,  I  have  talons,  I  can  be  cunning  and  strong 
at  once,  and  therefore  I  can  be  successful,'  she  says. 
1  Why  should  a  little  wretched  bird,  half  dead  already, 
with  drenched  wings,  and  maw  empty  of  food,  not  perish 
to  give  me  a  succulent  morsel  ?'  That  is  the  cat's  argu- 
ment: it  is  the  argument  of  the  tyrannis  everywhere. 
And  the  birds,  somehow  or  other,  always  leave  the 
safety  of  their  high  roof-tops,  and  their  ambient  air,  to 
come  down  where  the  cat  sits;  because,  though  within 
reach  of  her  claws,  they  thus  get  warmth,  and  crumbs, 
and  wool  for  their  nests,  where  she  is.  And  so  the  na- 
tions ever  leave  their  liberties,  and  their  simplicities,  and 
their  hardy  freedoms,  and  the  roof-tops  of  their  republics 
if  by  chance  they  have  ever  flown  so  far,  to  cluster  round 
some  fierce  tyrannis,  subtle  and  strong  in  one;  because 
though  they  are  pecked  and  slain  by  talon  and  fang  to 
sate  insatiate  greed,  they  find  food  easier  to  be  got,  and 
the  wherewithal  to  line  their  nests  more  abundant,  where 
a  despot  feeds  his  mob  into  a  proletariat,  than  where 
there  were  only  the  freedom  of  the  air  ami  the  elevation 
of  the  mountain-tops.  Thecal  kills,  aye;  but  each  foolish 
bird  deems  that  he  himself  will  have  the  good  luck  to  es- 
cape her,  and  each  comes  down  to  fatten  on  the  refuse  she 
has  left  on  her  plate  as  a  lure  for  him.  There  is  always 
the  cat  for  the  sparrow — the  tyrannis  for  the  republic, — 
that  once  has  learnt  to  covet!" 

And  with  that  piece  of  political  apologue  to  Mistigri, 
he  gave  her  a  cup  of  hot  milk,  from  which  she  drank  with 
dainty  lady's  ways,  and  which  she  enjoyed  more  than 
she  did  the  political  moralizing,  and  betook  himself  to  his 
own  breakfast. 

Ii  was  noon;  and  he  had  long  before  given  his  new- 
year  greet  iiiLT  to  t  he  household,  and  tendered  and  received 

the  simple  gifts  which,  in  this  quarter,  carried  alike  a 
pleasure  and  a  sincerity  unknown  where  gold  went  by 
handfuls  to  the  buying  of  treasures  made  worthless  and 
wearisome  by  hackneyed  custom. 

There  was  one  gifl  that  had  made  his  own  heart 
quicken  with  0  throb  of  rejoicing. 


376  TRICOTRFN, 

It  had  come  to  him  late  on  the  previous  night,  brought 
by  the  hands  of  a  sturdy  youth  of  the  shores  of  Finis- 
terre,  who  had  wandered,  in  self-will,  and  on  the  spur  of 
a  young  man's  vague  ambitions  and  discontent,  up  to  the 
great  city;  with  some  such  seething  impatience  and  aspi- 
ration in  his  soul  as  were  once  in  the  lion-heart  of  the 
farmer's  son  from  Arcis-sur-Aube.  It  stood  now  above 
the  stove,  in  the  lofty  whitewashed  barren  garret,  wherein 
the  Greek  Canaris  had  once  been  fed  and  succored,  and 
the  Waif  of  the  Loire  had  once  dreamed  her  dreams  over 
her  roasting  chestnuts.  It  was  the  model  of  a  ship,  cut 
out  of  oak  that  was  dark  as  ebony  from  long  burial 
beneath  sea-water :  it  had  been  carved  with  exceeding 
skill  and  patience,  with  no  better  instruments  than  a  rude 
clasp-knife  and  an  oyster-shell  ground  to  a  fine  edge;  and 
had  been  polished  with  the  sands  of  the  shore  till  it  shone 
like  black  marble,  where  it  stood  against  the  whitewashed 
wall. 

On  it  was  cut : 

"Rioz  to  Tricotrin." 

It  had  been  the  work  of  several  long  winters,  shaped 
to  the  measure  of  the  beating  sea,  fashioned  to  the  dies 
irse  of  the  storm  wind. 

To  every  other  eye  it  was  a  toy,  something  clumsily 
made,  perchance,  as  by  a  fisherman's  rough  hands  and 
ill-suited  tools  ;  the  mere  model  in  old  wreck-wood  of  a 
fishing-smack.  But  to  him  it  bore  a  story  of  a  life  re- 
deemed, of  a  life  conquered,  of  a  life  saved  from  the  hell 
of  its  own  passions  by  justice  and  by  patience — a  story 
of  self-conquest  as  great,  of  self-denial  as  strong,  of  travail 
with  temptation  as  bitter,  of  expiation  in  pain  as  long- 
enduring,  as  were  ever  symbolized  by  the  white  crucifix 
above  cathedral  altars. 

It  had  come  far  to  him;  come  from  that  iron-bound, 
furious,  terrific  coast  upon  the  western  waters,  where  he 
had  dwelt  for  three  years  asunder  from  the  world,  and 
away  from  all  its  beauty  and  its  joy,  that  he  might  drag 
one  human  life  from  the  blackness  of  its  guilt  as  he  would 
have  dragged  it  from  the  seizure  of  the  waves. 

It  had  come  far  to  him  from  that  old  Armorican  shore ; 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         37? 

and  it  had  moved  him  strangely ;  speaking  to  him  with  a 
voice  that  he  alone  could  hear. 

"  Chut!  Mistigri,"  he  said  softly,  as  his  eyes  fell  on  it 
where  he  sat.  "I  was  wrong  to  say  there  are  only  the 
cat  and  the  sparrows,  only  the  tyrannis  and  the  prole- 
tariat ; — are  there  not  ever,  if  we  will  only  look  for  them, 
some  battle  to  be  fought,  some  patience  to  be  needed, 
some  vileness  to  be  wrestled  with,  some  greatness  to  be 
rescued  ?  Bah,  little  one  1  If  we  only  all  remembered 
that,  and  occupied  ourselves  with  that,  we  should  be 
doing  more  good  than  by  raving  about  the  cat's  talons, 
and  blaming  the  sparrows  for  not  living  on  hill-tops  like 
eagles  !" 

Mistigri  finished  her  milk,  inattentive  to  his  discourse; 
in  her  secret  heart  she  sympathized  much  with  the  cats, 
little  with  the  sparrows,  not  at  all  with  the  eagles.  Mis- 
tigri had  been  reared  in  the  atmosphere  of  republicanism ; 
like  many  democrats  by  education,  she  only  really  ad- 
mired the  "tyrannis,"  and  had  she  lived  in  the  days  of 
Dictatorship,  would  have  sat  upon  Sulla's  shoulder. 

Tricotrin  rose,  put  on  his  loose  coat  of  furs,  thrust  her 
gently  into  its  breast  pocket,  and  went  out  into  the  snow. 

The  kitten  which  had  been  driven  away  had  returned, 
and  having  eaten  up  the  blood-flecked  feathers  had  set 
itself  to  watch  upon  its  own  account. 

"There!"  murmured  Tricotrin  to  the  monkey.  "You 
see  that  is  always  the  way — it  is  never  the  tyrannis  that 
is  the  sole  evil;  there  are  always  the  blood-suckers  that 
seize  what  the  chief  talon  has  spared,  there  are  always 
the  followers  and  imitators  who  multiply  one  evil  into  a 
hundred.  The  hill-tops  are  cold,  my  good  friend-spar- 
rows, hut  believe  me  they  are  far  better." 

The  proletarian  sparrows,  however,  disregarded  him, 
and  continued  to  put  themselves  within  cats' reach,  for 
sake  of  the  crumbs  of  food  lefl  on  the  platter,  as  he  turned 
out  of  the  passage-way  and  took  his  road  la  cross  the 
river  into  the  aristocratic  quarters  of  Paris. 

These  were  thronged,  busy,  mirthful,  glittering,  with 
the  gay  crowds  of  holiday-makers  and  gift-buyers;  he 
paid  do  heed  to  anything  he  saw  upon  the  way,  not 
loitering  as  his  habit  was  for  jest,  or  act,  or  indolent 

32* 


378  TRICOTRIN, 

amusement  with  the  humorous  of  the  town,  but  pressing 
straight  onward  into  the  patrician  parts  he  sought. 

His  eyes  were  eager,  anxious,  clouded,  sunlit,  all  at  once  : 
like  the  eyes  of  one  who  goes  to  what  is  half  anguish 
and  half  ecstasy. 

He  paused  at  length  before  the  massive  metal  gates  of 
a  great  court. 

In  years  long  gone  by,  when,  in  scorching  midsummer 
weather  the  blood  of  men  had  been  heated  to  fever-heat, 
and  broken  into  sanguinary  act  as  over-ripe  grass  breaks 
into  flame,  a  great  mob  had  beaten  in  with  maddened 
blows  those  strong-wrought  brazen  gates,  and  forced 
themselves  into  the  court  within,  and  spread  over  it  like 
a  flood,  and  sworn  to  sack  and  burn  all  that  they  beheld. 
And  they  had  been  driven  back  by  him,  scourged  with 
his  scornful  rebuke  as  with  the  stripes  of  a  whip,  as  he 
saved  the  Lira  Palace  from  destruction. 

Now  he  went  thither — doubtful  how  he  should  gain 
admittance  through  the  flippant,  idle,  insolent  herd  of 
lackeys  and  of  pages  that  lounged  through  their  indolent 
days  in  its  halls  and  corridors. 

"  Your  duchess  is  visible  ?"  he  asked  of  them,  as  cross- 
ing the  great  court  he  entered  the  first  hall,  lofty,  vaulted, 
all  of  white  marble,  with  only  touches  of  dead  gold  and 
of  deep  purple  to  break  its  purity  and  vastness. 

"  She  is  come  from  Spain ;  but  she  will  not  be  likely 
to  receive  you!"  said  one  of  the  group  of  pages,  with 
sneering  impudence,  glancing  at  the  new-comer,  whom  he 
recognized  as  a  mad  bohemian,  whom  the  people  cherished, 
but  who  was  never  seen  anywhere  save  in  hovels,  and 
wine-shops,  and  thieves'  haunts,  and  artists'  attics. 

"  That  question  is  not  for  you  to  ask  or  to  decide,"  said 
Tricotrin,  tranquilly.  "  Go — and  tell  your  mistress  that 
I  am  here." 

"And  who  may  '  I'  be  ?"  scoffed  the  page,  incensed  at 
the  tone  and  at  the  words. 

"Tricotrin,"  he  answered  simply.  "Play  no  longer 
with  phrases ;  do  your  errand,  and  bring  me  word  what 
her  pleasure  is." 

The  page  loitered,  sorely  inclined  to  test  the  patience 
of  his  adversary  under  insolence  and  torment ;  but  some- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         379 

thing  fearful  of  such  self-indulgence,  sent  the  message 
through  other  servants  to  her  chamberlain,  who  took  it 
sullenly,  not  without  reluctance  and  wonder ;  though  he 
was  aware  that  the  new-comer  had  been  held  in  high 
esteem  by  his  late  master,  and  had  done  him  great  service 
in  days  of  revolution. 

The  chamberlain  passed  through  several  chambers, 
picture-cabinets,  and  reception-rooms,  and  entered  at 
length  an  apartment  looking  on  the  gardens  at  the  back 
of  the  hotel ;  an  octagon,  all  azure,  and  silver,  and  tem- 
pered light,  and  delicate  fragrance,  with  walls  after  Boucher, 
and  the  laughing  Hours  imitated  from  Coreggio  dancing 
in  a  joyous  band  around  the  ceiling. 

Sunk  among  cushions  was  the  most  lovely  woman  of 
her  time  and  of  her  court.  The  fire  gleams  flashed  on 
the  silk  folds  of  skirts,  whose  negligence  was  the  supreme 
perfection  of  art:  her  fair  hands  glowed  with  rings;  and 
as  she  glanced  at  a  book  that  lay  upon  her  lap,  she  toyed 
with  a  Polichinelle,  whose  bells  were  of  gold,  whose 
tambourine  was  circled  with  pearls,  and  who  had  cost 
thai  morning  seven  hundred  francs. 

Around  her  were  strewn  jewel  caskets,  bonbon  boxes, 
bouquets,  playthings,  marvelous  in  ingenuity  and  extrava- 
gance, fans  of  every  make  and  of  inconceivable  costliness, 
all  that  fancy  could  fashion,  and  riches  be  wasted  on  ;  as 
though  every  shop  in  Paris  had  been  emptied  there,  in 
the  lavishness  of  the  new-year  offerings.  And  at  a  third 
of  them  she  had  not  looked. 

There  is  a  wild  and  wavward  destinv  in  life  which  ever 

s.  J 

loads  fruition  \\  ith  sat  iety. 

Lost  in  languid,  sunny,  victorious  musing,  she  did  not 
hear  her  servant's  entrance  until  he  had  approached  her, 
and  spoken  the  few  words  of  the  message  with  hesitating 
deference,  and  scarcely  concealed  expectancy  of  a  refusal. 

She   Started    slightly,   and    over    her  face   swept    for  a 

1 nent    a   shadow  of  annoyance,  mingled  with    another 

feeling  that  her  astute  attendant  could  no1  analyze.  Both 
Mere  instantly  banished;  she  answered  with  tranquil  in- 
difference. 

"Certainly.     Admit  him  here." 

Her  chamberlain  backed  out  from  her  presence,  filled 


380  TRICOTRIN, 

with  a  curiosity  that  he  dared  not  utter.  A  few  minutes 
went  by,  then  into  her  chamber  was  ushered, — one,  who 
to  her  conscience,  her  memory,  and  her  life,  was  a  Re- 
proach. 

He  bent  his  head  before  her,  and  stood  still,  without 
advancing,  while  the  attendants  closed  the  door  behind 
him. 

She,  with  a  flush  over  the  fairness  of  her  brow,  rose 
with  her  hands  outstretched,  her  rich  silks  and  laces  trail- 
ing round  her,  her  loveliness  shrined  in  the  dazzling  heaps 
of  her  strewn  new-year  gifts.  Her  first  impulse  was  of 
proud  shameful  pain  ;  her  next  of  conscience-stricken  and 
awakening  loyalty. 

He  shaded  his  eyes  one  moment  with  his  hand  with 
the  gesture  of  one  whom  the  sun  blinds,  then  came  to 
her  and  took  her  own  hands  in  his  in  silence.  There  was 
no  one  near  to  witness  how  a  bohemian  was  received  by 
a  great  lady. 

"Viva!" — that  was  all  he  said  ;  but  in  the  single  word 
was  a  caress  and  a  benediction  beyond  all  that  longer 
utterance  could  have  given. 

She,  a  proud  and  splendid  woman,  in  the  plenitude  of 
power,  and  the  dauntlessness  of  empire,  shrank  slightly 
as  she  heard  it ;  it  was  fraught  with  all  that  she  would 
have  buried  in  oblivion  forever;  it  recalled  all  that  galled, 
and  fretted,  and  embittered  her  cloudless  and  haughty 
life.  With  that  word  came  back  to  her  all  the  shame" she 
burned  to  ignore  and  forget,  as  though  it  had  never  been ; 
it  brought  with  it  all  the  echoes  of  that  early  and  inno- 
cent affection  to  which  she  had  so  long  been  faithless  and 
disloyal. 

She  was  cold,  while  she  knew  coldness  so  base ;  she 
was  restless  under  his  gaze,  though  she  knew  that  so 
much  love  looked  on  her  in  it ;  she  was  stung  with  impa- 
tience and  with  false  pride,  though  she  knew  that  in  him 
she  saw  the  savior  of  her  existence. 

It  had  been  years  since  she  had  beheld  him,  and  in 
those  years  the  power  of  the  world  and  the  poison  of 
vanity  had  eaten  far  into  the  purer  gold  of  her  nature. 

"  It  is  so  long  since  I  have  seen  you!"  she  murmured, 
as  she  drew  her  hands  from  his  hold  gently,  and  sank 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         381 

among  the  cushions  of  her  couch,  turning  her  eyes  upon 
him. 

"Nay, — not  longer  than  is  best,"  he  answered  her, 
with  a  tremor  in  his  voice.  "You  had  seen  me  oftener 
had  you  missed  the  sight  of  me.  But  that  was  not  prob- 
able; not  possible." 

She  hurriedly  began  to  utter  the  denial  that  courtesy 
compelled  and  gratitude  required. 

He  stopped  her  with  a  gesture,  slight,  but  of  authority. 

"  Hush  !  No  disclaimer  against  truth  out  of  courtesy 
to  me.  Think  you  I  cease  to  know  your  heart  better  than 
you  know  it  yourself  ?  You  forgot  me;  it  was  natural, 
inevitable.     Why  not? — why  not?" 

There  was  an  unconscious  pathos  and  wistfulness  in 
his  accent;  as  though,  against  himself  and  his  rights 
which  arraigned  her,  he  pleaded  excuse  for  the  negligence 
and  the  ingratitude  of  the  one  who  owed  him  her  rescue 
from  the  grave. 

Her  eyelids  fell;  her  forehead  flushed;  the  imperial 
coquette  felt  humbled  in  her  own  sight. 

"  You  deem  me  very  base,"  she  murmured. 

"  Base  ?  No.  Only, — a  woman  1  Long  ago  did  I  not 
tell  thee  how  it  would  be  with  me  and  thee?  I  knew 
the  world's  work.  Thou  didst  not, — then.  But  /  do  not 
blame  thee,  Viva." 

His  phrase  had  changed  insensibly  into  the  familiar 
"thou;"  and  his  eyes,  as  they  dwelt  upon  her,  had  the 
yearning  love  of  lover,  husband,  father,  poet,  all  blended 
in  one  passion, — a  passion  mighty  as  death,  and  which 
would  live  and  die,  holding  eternal  silence. 

Her  cheeks  burned  as  she  heard,  she  breathed  quickly 
with  agitation :  at  the  sound  of  his  voice  the  old,  warm, 
reverent  tenderness  stirred  from  its  embers  in  her  heart; 
and  yet, — it  seemed  so  hard  that  one  should  live  who 
knew  what  she  had  been,  it  seemed  so  bitter  that  one 
should  look  on  her  who  could  remember  her  the  child  of 
charity ! 

He  watched  her,  reading  well  her  thoughts  ;  and  gazing 
at  the  marvelous  change  wrought  in  her ;  at  the  perfec- 
tion, as  of  some  superb  tropical  flower,  to  which  her  early 
promise  had  expanded,  at  the  magic  whereby  the  fair 


38^  TRICOTRIN, 

child  that  he  had  known  had  altered  into  this  magnificent 
patrician. 

A  young  girl,  lovely  as  a  poet's  ideal  of  Gretchen,  had 
been  crowned  by  the  Loire-side  queen  of  the  vintage- 
feast:  but  a  woman,  superb  as  a  sculptor's  dream  of  As- 
pasia,  was  before  him  now.  He  gazed  at  her  long,  then 
turned  away  as  with  a  sudden  pang  of  unbearable  agony. 

"  Good  God  !     How  changed  you  are  !" 

She  smiled,  a  dreamy,  haughty,  careless  smile.  She 
knew  it  well,  and  was  proud  of  the  change  that  to  him 
was  so  bitter.  Yet  something  in  the  phrase  jarred  on 
her :  she  had  so  long  tried  to  forget  that  she  had  ever 
been  otherwise  than  what  she  was  now,  that  the  trial  had 
brought  success  with  herself,  and  self-persuasion  had 
almost  induced  self-deception. 

And  she  did  not  heed,  or  did  not  even  divine,  the  an- 
guish that  change  bore  for  him. 

It  was  never  betrayed.  She  knew  well  that  he  loved 
her  :  but  she  never  dreamed  how  he  loved  her.  It  was  a 
martyrdom,  without  even  the  reward  of  recognition. 

"I  could  scarcely  be  otherwise  than  changed,"  she 
answered  him  musingly.  "  Do  you  know — do  you  know 
— it  seems  scarcely  possible  to  me  that  I  could  ever  have 
been  the  child  you  knew  and  succored?" 

"  Does  it?"  he  replied,  gently;  for  he  never  lost  gen- 
tleness to  her,  however  deeply  she  might  wound  him. 
"That  is  very  natural,  I  dare  say.  Yes:  it  is  inevitable 
you  should  be  changed;  and  in  much  more  than  mere 
form.     You  have  a  lofty  station,  Viva  ?" 

"Yes," — her  delicate  brows  contracted;  the  Duchess 
de  Lira,  whom  none  ever  addressed  save  by  titles  of 
dignity  and  reverence,  could  have  wished  that  familiar 
pet-name  of  her  childhood,  that  relic  of  her  foundling's 
estate,  dropped  out  forever  into  oblivion. 

"You  have  the  whole  of  the  Lira  properties?"  he 
asked. 

"  Every  acre  ;  every  sou.  He  had  not  a  living  relative. 
He  could  will  them  where  he  would." 

"  His  was  a  great  nature — a  noble  nature." 

"He  was  most  generous, — yes." 

"Did  he  suffer  much?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         383 

"Not  much — I  trust.     He  died  in  ruy  absence;  but 
.  calmly,  and  painlessly,  they  assured  me." 

"  You  regretted  him  ?" 

The  color  flushed  her  face  again. 

"  Not  so  much  as  I  ought ;  I  knew  that  well  at  the 
time.  I  regretted  his  mother's  death  far  more.  I  grew 
to  love  her  well,  and  she  loved  me " 

"  But  so  did  he — God  knows!" 

"Ah,  yes  ! — far  more  than  I  merited,  you  would  say. 
That  I  am  sure.  But  one  cannot  love  merely  because 
one  is  loved,  you  know  ?  He  was  most  good,  most 
gentle,  most  thoughtful  for  me,  and  I  owed  him  very 
much  ;  but " 

"He  was  nothing  to  you!  No;  you  have  had  too 
much  tenderness  in  your  life  to  know  its  worth.  You 
are  surfeited  with  it,  and  it  is  valueless.  Had  you  had 
but  a  few  crumbs  instead  of  such  abundant  banquets,  you 
would  feel  very  differently.  Bread  is  tasteless  to  the  rich 
man;  but  bread  to  the  poor  man  is  as  the  apples  of  para- 
dise.    He  was  aware  that  you  cared  nothing  for  him?" 

"  He  must  have  been  so.  I  never  used  dissimulation. 
They  made  me  very  happy,  and  1  liked  them — thus;  but 
I  never  professed  attachment  I  did  not  feel.  Besides — I 
have  no  belief  in  that  idyllic  folly  they  call  'love!'" 

"You  have  not?" she  had  no  belief  in  love,  while 

over  her  life  watched  a  love  exhaustless,  unrepaid,  purified 
to  sublimity,  and  free  from  one  murmur  of  reproach 
against  her! 

She  looked  quickly  up  at  him. 

"Of  what  are  you  thinking?" 

"Shall  I  tell  you?" 

"Surely." 

"Well — I  thought  thai  the  foundling,  who  was  mine, 
would  have  flung  back,  as  disgrace  and  insult,  the  bribe 
of  a  silver  coin  that  should  have  been  offered  her  to  pur- 
chase a  single  kiss  from  her  lips.  Bu1  the  aristocrat,  with 
whose  life  1  have  nothing  to  do,  had  so  little  of  that  true 
pride  left,  that  she  saw  qo  shame  in  bartering  for  gold 
and  rank  all  her  youth,  all  her  beauty,  all  her  soul  !" 

The  simplicity  of  the  words  had  a  grand  rebuke,  a  re- 
buke that  stung  her  keenly.     She  had  enough  still  in  her 


384  TRICOTRIN, 

of  the  temper  which  had  made  her  loathe  her  young 
lover's  golden  toys,  to  make  her  now  feel  every  barb  of  the 
censure  to  the  quick. 

"  You  blame  me  because  I  am  married  !"  she  murmured, 
with  an  impatient  irritation. 

"  Because  you  married  without  love.  The  woman  who 
does  so  sells  herself  as  utterly  as,  and  little  less  basely 
than,  the  courtesan." 

She  gave  a  languid  gesture  of  offense.  Truth  lay  in 
his  words;  and  unwelcome  truth,  with  its  severity  and 
its  nakedness,  was  an  outrage  that  never  approached  her 
graceful  presence. 

"You  speak  strongly  on  a  singular  subject,"  she 
answered,  coldly.  "  I  am  not  accustomed  to  such  lan- 
guage. I  view  marriage  as  the  world,  I  believe,  views 
it;  and  at  the  time  of  my  own  you  were  informed  of  it, 
and  you  offered  no  objections " 

"  I  bade  you  do  as  you  desired.  It  was  not  for  me  to 
stand  between  you  and  the  magnificence  you  coveted  and 
could  obtain.  You  knew  what  I  thought,  full  well.  But 
I  have  not  come  hither  to  upbraid  you  for  that  which  is 
past.  I  pitied  the  man  who  spent  his  whole  soul  on  you, 
and  bought  your  loveliness  through  his  wealth,  and  found 
that,  squander  what  he  would,  he  could  not  buy  one  throb 
of  tenderness,  one  pulse  of  warmth  1  I  pitied  him  from 
my  heart " 

"  Others  envied  him  !" 

There  were  all  the  insolence  of  supreme  vanity,  all  the 
sovereignty  of  supreme  triumph,  in  the  accent  with  which 
the  brief  phrase  was  uttered. 

"  They  might  do  so.  I  was  not  among  them,"  he  an- 
swered, gravely.  "  He  purchased  a  bird  without  a  song, 
a  rose  without  fragrance,  a  sun  without  warmth.  For — 
he  bought  your  beauty  without  a  soul  1  And  you  left 
him  to  die  in  your  absence !" 

Her  white/delicate  teeth  bit  the  lower  lip  of  her  bow- 
like mouth.  She  moved  impatiently,  contemptuously. 
She,— whom  none  ever  erossed  or  contradicted  in  her 
slightest  whim  or  caprice,— to  be  arraigned  and  censured 
by  a  wanderer,  a  bohemian,  an  outcast !  For  thus  in  her 
thoughts  she  classed  now  the  redeemer  of  her  life. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         385 

"You  are  angered  because  I  say  this  thing,"  he  pur- 
sued. "I  will  say  more.  You  chose  to  wed  with  him 
because  he  was  noble,  he  was  of  great  riches,  he  could 
give  you  a  lofty  station " 

•'  Who  else  would  have  done  so?"  she  interrupted  him 
passionately.  "  You  forget!  I  had  no  name,  no  parent- 
age, though  means  were  found  to  hide  this,  and  give  me 
in  semblance  foreign  origin ;  there  was  not  another  of 
such  rank  as  hjs  that  could  have  wedded  one  under  such 
social  ban  as  mine  without  exposure  of  it;  there  was  not 
another  who  could  have  concealed  the  truth  from  the 
world  as  he  could,  nor  from  whom  it  could  have  been 
withheld." 

"  No ;  and  therefore  for  that  cause  you  sold  yourself 
to  him.  I  repeat  the  word  that  galls  you  so  greatly. 
But  it  is  precisely  because  this  man  loved  you  so  tenderly, 
so  generously,  so  patiently,  that  your  sin  against  him  was 
so  dark.  You  took  all,  and  repaid  him  nothing  in  the 
only  coin  you  had  to  give;  and  when  he  died  you  were 
only — in  your  heart — content  to  be  so  soon  left  free,  to 
be  so  soon  unchained  to  enjoy  all  the  possessions  that  he 
gave  without  the  burden  on  them  of  their  giver's  life." 

She  was  silent;  but  the  hand  which  had  let  fall  the 
Polichinclle  beat  impatiently  on  the  mosaic  table  beside 
her  couch,  and  a  shadow  of  vehement  offense,  mingled  with 
something  of  repentance  and  of  consciousness,  darkened 
her  fair  and  serene  face.  She  knew  that  he  read  her  soul 
with  all  his  olden  accuracy;  she  knew  that  he  spoke  what 
was  but  the  simple  truth. 

She  glanced  at  him,  and  felt  steal  on  her  the  wonder 
which,  since  she  had  known  the  world,  had  often  come 
across  her  mind,  as  to  whence  arose  that  strange  and 
strong  tmlikeness  betwixt  his  fortunes  and  his  bearing. 

She — grown  keenly  critical,  scornfully  indifferent,  and 
very  difficult  to  impress — was  struck  as  she  had  never 
been  with  the  authority,  the  dignity,  the  kingliness  of  his 
manner,  the  pure  accent  of  his  voice,  the  careless  grace 
of  his  movements.  In  her  early  years  this  question  had 
never  occurred  to  her.  She  had  had  no  standard  with 
which  to  compare  him:  now  she  wondered,  in  this  first 
moment  of  his  entrance  to  her,  whence  he  came,  how  he 

33 


386  TRIOOTRIN, 

had  become  what  he  was, — this  man  who  was  without 
grade  and  without  home,  who  lived  among  the  peasantry, 
the  populace,  the  fisher-people,  who  was  an  itinerant  and 
a  socialist,  yet  who  had  about  him  a  command  monarchs 
might  have  envied,  and  a  beauty  that  painters  might  have 
given  to  an  Agamemnon. 

Once,  when  she  had  still  been  his,  the  story  of  his  life 
had  been  upon  his  lips  to  tell  her.  The  impulse  had  been 
repressed,  the  tale  remained  untold  forever. 

"Why  did  you  never  come  to  me  while  my  husband 
lived  ?"  she  asked  him  suddenly. 

Now  and  again  she  had  seen  him ;  seen  him  as  he  sold 
the  Italian  boy's  images  to  the  populace,  as  he  stood  out- 
side the  gates  of  the  Tuileries  that  she  quitted,  as  she 
rode  through  a  German  pine-forest,  as  she  drove  through 
a  Lombardic  city,  as  she  watched  the  Roman  Carnival 
from  her  balcony,  as  she  glided  over  the  ice  of  Neva  to 
the  music  of  her  silver  sleigh-bells.  She  had  seen  him 
often — ever  with  a  strange  flush,  a  strange  pang,  a  strange 
emotion  of  mingled  sorrow  and  delight,  tenderness  and 
shame.  But  from  the  time  that  he  had  heard  of  her 
marriage,  he  had  never  approached  her. 

The  unloved  lord  who,  heaping  all  his  treasures  on  her, 
yet  could  not  win  one  soft  thought  from  her,  divined 
through  sympathy  the  reason  of  this  absence.  She  never 
did.  So  little  did  she  comprehend  his  motive  that  she, 
in  all  her  eminence,  in  all  her  brilliancy,  felt  oftentimes  a 
pained  and  passionate  anger  that  this  man,  whom  still  in 
her  soul  she  loved  as  she  had  loved  no  other  living  creat- 
ure, should  thus  withhold  himself  from  witnessing  her 
glories. 

"Why  did  you  never  come?"  she  repeated,  with  im- 
perious persistency.  "The  duke  held  you  in  warm 
esteem,  in  high  honor — you  know  that!" 

"I  do  not  think  my  absence  lessened  either  his  esteem 
or  his  honor.  I  never  came  to  you  because — because — 
no  matter  why !  I  acted  as  I  deemed  best.  You  need 
not  question  that." 

She  was  stilled  and  vaguely  disquieted  by  the  reply. 
Even  yet,  despite  the  lapse  of  years,  he  possessed  an  in- 
fluence over  her  that  no  other  had  ever  attained. 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         387 

"You  lead  a  brilliant  life?"  he  pursued,  desirous  to 
turn  aside  from  the  subject  on  which  she  pressed  him. 

"I  lead  the  customary  life  of  my  station:" 

She  hesitated  a  moment ;  the  thought  crossed  her  mind, 
could  not  she  pay  by  Power  the  debt  that  Gratitude  had 
left  unpaid  ?  Was  there  no  benefit  possible  from  her  high 
position  and  vast  influence  that  might  strike  the  balance 
between  them,  and  do  something  to  lessen  that  weight  of 
obligation  which  it  so  galled  her  proud  throat  to  bear  ? 

But  the  mere  thought  looked  insult  to  him.  She  did 
not  dare  to  utter  it  aloud. 

"  I  saw  something  of  the  fashion  in  which  you  seek  to 
make  the  hours  fly,  down  at  your  castle  in  the  south,"  he 
continued.  "  I  arrived  there  too  late  to  have  an  inter- 
view with  you  there.  You  were  gone  to  the  royal  mar- 
riage in  Spain;  but  I  heard  much  of  you  on  your  estate, 
much  of  the  magnificence  of  your  hospitalities " 

She  turned  her  head  with  that  smile  wherewith  she 
was  accustomed  to  deal  as  she  chose  with  the  souls  of 
men. 

"  Do  not  be  content  with  hearsay  of  them.  Let  them 
be  shown  to,  and  tested  by,  yourself.  That  will  give  me 
far  more  pleasure." 

It  was  a  courtly,  graceful,  elegant  utterance ;  but  it 
struck  cold  as  ice  to  his  heart.  There  was  no  warmth  in 
it;  there  was  only  the  polished  suavity  of  conventional 
courtesy. 

"  I  have  never  sat  at  any  gold-laden  table.  I  shall  not 
commence  with  yours,"  he  said  curtly.  "Why  let  us  deal 
in  this  hypocrisy?  You  know  as  well  as  I — I  as  well  as 
you — that  it  would  only  be  irritation  and  ignominy  to 
you  to  see  me  among  your  guests.  You  could  not  account 
for  me  :  you  would  have  to  present  me  as  'Tricotrin,  the 
bohemian,'  you  would  be  compelled  to  admit  that  I  hail 
no  friends  except  the  People. — no,  I  know  your  nature  far 
too  well,  and  that  of  the  world  you  live  in.  to  impose  any 
such  penalty  and  penance  upon  you.  You  see — I  can 
have  some  sympathy  with  the  class  to  which  you  belong — 
I  can  even  sympathize  with  its  false  shame!" 

The  contemptuous  bitterness  of  his  answer  stung  the 


388  TRICOTRIN, 

latent  truth  in  her  into  life ;  she  was  pained  by  it,  and 
the  natural  frankness  of  her  temper  broke  into  speech. 

"Ah  1"  she  said,  with  involuntary  self-scorn,  "  there  you 
do  them  wrong,  not  me.  If  I  had  been  born  and  reared 
in  their  rank,  I  should  not  know  that  'false  shame.' 
The  Order  never  has  it:  it  is  far  too  proud  of  itself.  An 
hereditary  prince  may  shake  hands  with  a  beggar,  he  can- 
not lose  rank  thereby :  it  is  the  new-comer  into  honors  and 
splendors  who  dares  not  imperil  his  fresh  titles  by  touch- 
ing the  beggar,  lest  the  world  cry,  'see — he  runs  to  his 
brother!'" 

He  looked  at  her  earnestly. 

"  You  have  the  acuteness  and  the  sarcasm  in  you  to  see 
this,"  he  said,  "and  yet " 

"  And  yet  I  am  no  better  than  what  I  satirize  !  Is  that 
an  uncommon  fault  in  your  Juvenals  and  Voltaires  and 
Swifts?  So — you  heard  of  me  in  the  south.  What  do 
my  people  say  ?" 

And  despite  the  momentary  self-dissection  in  wliich 
she  had  lashed  herself  scornfully  as  an  alien,  and  adven- 
turess, in  the  great  order  to  which  she  now  belonged, 
there  were  all  the  royalty  of  possession,  all  the  negligence 
of  command,  in  the  intonation  of  those  words,  "my  peo- 
ple."    In  such  a  tone  might  Maria  Theresa  have  spoken ! 

"Your  people?"  he  echoed,  with  a  certain  ironic  dis- 
dain that  cut  her  pride  hardly.  "  Well,  they  talk  of  your 
splended  entertainments ;  you  do  not  give  them  much  else 
to  talk  of,  I  believe,  except  it  be  of  the  extortions  and  op- 
pressions of  your  stewards." 

"Extortions  !     Oppressions  1     I  never  heard  of  any." 

"Doubtless.  How  should  you  hear?  If  a  wood-cut- 
ter or  a  charcoal-burner,  grimy,  starved,  and  half  clad, 
found  his  way  on  to  your  terraces  to  accuse  your  great 
servants  of  peculation  and  tyrannies,  which  would  he  be 
likeliest  to  get — a  blow  from  a  lackey's  wand  if  he  did 
not  shuffle  away  quickly  enough,  or  a  polite  ushering  in 
to  your  audience-chamber  ?" 

She  smiled  a  little,  but  vexatiously. 

"  Well  !  Would  you  have  my  rooms  thronged  all  day 
with  a  mob  of  foresters  and  burrowers  in  the  earth  ?" 

"  There  is  a  time  for  all  things.     There  can  be  hours 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         389 

set  apart  for  such  hearings.  It  is  just  that  barring  out 
of  the  unjustly-oppressed  from  the  audience-room,  when 
they  are  only  armed  with  an  appeal,  that  brings,  sooner 
or  later,  the  clamorous  mob,  armed  with  clubs  and  pikes, 
into  the  banqueting-hall.  It  is  not  the  nobles'  fault,  it  is 
the  fault  of  their  hirelings :  for  none  are  so  brutal  to  the 
poor  as  those  who  have  once  been  of  them.  You  have 
the  same  stewards  that  the  Duke  de  Lira  employed,  I 
suppose  ?" 

She  colored  a  little. 

"  Not  in  the  south.  The  person  he  had  left  in  office 
there  opposed  my  will  in  one  or  two  matters :  one  does 
not  pay  servants  to  have  them  dispute,  discuss,  advise, 
and  finally  disobey.  I  discharged  him ;  and  obtained 
one  who  knew  his  place  better." 

"  Who  gives  yon  lip-service  and  the  form  of  obedience 
that  lies  in  servility;  and  makes  your  name  hated 
throughout  your  estates,  by  wringing  subsidies  from  the 
poverty-stricken  for  his  own  private  purse  :  yes — I  dare 
say  that  is  knowing  his  place  better  1  As  modern  en- 
lightenment goes.  But — despite  your  sanction  of  his 
reign — I  shall  be  glad  if  you  will  take  some  pity  on  an 
old  truffle  hunter  in  your  woods.  He  is  very  old,  and 
lame;  can  live  only  a  few  years  at  most;  and  having 
dwelt  on  the  Lira  estates  from  his  birth  upward,  may 
claim  to  have  the  trouble  of  keeping  his  body  and  soul 
together  made  somewhat  easier  to  him.  Besides,  he 
lias  a  piteous  story." 

"Assuredly.  I  will  direct  them  to  see  that  he  wants 
for  nothing.     Will  you  give  me  his  name?" 

"  It  is  Aubin  Kalcor." 

She  noted  it  down  on  the  little  ivory  tablet  hanging  by 
its  gold  chain  at  her  side.  She  did  nut  ask  the  old  man's 
history,  so  he  left  it  unrelated.  He  felt  that  the  memory 
of  Coriolis  must  si  ill  be  painful  and  unwelcome  to  her. 

"  You  know,  I  lia\  e  been  but  little  in  our  own  country," 
she  pursued,  as  though  in  apology  for  her  ignorance  of 
the  necessities  of  the  poor  upon  ber  lands.  "We  were 
occasionally  in  Paris,  but  far  oftener  abroad.  The  year 
after  the  duke's  death  1  passed  in  retirement  in  my  villa 
upon  Como.     The  only  time  I  have  been  at  the  castle  I 

33* 


390  TRICOTRIN, 

have  been  surrounded  for  a  few  weeks  only  with  a  circle 
of  guests  that  left  me  little  time  for  thought.  This  sum- 
mer I  entertained  the  king  of but  you  know  all  these 

things  ?" 

She  broke  off  somewhat  hastily,  with  a  sense  of  anger, 
that  nothing  in  her  dignities  or  in  her  splendors  could 
move  him  to  surprise  at,  or  to  veneration  of  them. 

"  Yes,"  he  answered  her.  "  There  is  nothing  in  your 
life  I  do  not  know." 

"  But  how  ?     I  have  met  you  so  rarely." 

"  That  may  easily  be.  You  would  probably  have  dis- 
cerned me,  had  your  thoughts  been  of  me.  Anyhow  I 
have  watched  you — many  times.  But  I  do  not  want  to 
talk  of  myself;  here  is  your  oldest  friend  whom  you  have 
not  yet  seen." 

She  started  as  the  monkey  sprang  forth  from  where  it 
had  slumbered  in  his  pocket :  the  sight  of  the  little  animal 
recalled  so  many  memories  in  such  vivid  intensity. 

She  covered  her  eyes  with  her  hand  for  awhile,  and 
breathed  rapidly  and  with  emotion.  She  was  once  more 
a  child  on  the  banks  of  the  sunny  Loire :  she  saw  once 
more  the  innocent  and  lowly  home  from  which  she  had 
gone  without  one  backward  glance  of  gratitude  or  of  re- 
gret. She  was  moved  more  keenly  than  she  had  been 
for  many  years. 

But  her  life  had  taught  her  to  conquer  and  conceal  all 
agitation ;  she  was  quick  to  recover  her  habitual  calm 
and  negligence. 

She  stretched  out  her  jeweled  hands  full  of  sweetmeats 
from  the  new-year  boxes. 

"Ah,  little  Mistigri!  She  is  still  alive  I  How  old  she 
must  be  by  now  1  Mistigri,  will  you  not  eat  my  sugared 
almonds  ?" 

Mistigri  was  either  shy  or  cross:  she  would  not  be 
cajoled  into  touching  one  of  the  dainty,  pretty,  colored 
crystals  of  sugar :  she  did  not  recognize  her  old  playmate, 
for  whose  rescue  she  had  once  voted  with  her  filbert,  in 
this  brilliant  aristocrat  who  held  her  out  these  bonbons. 

"  Mistigri  does  not  know  you,"  he  said  quietly,  stroking 
the  little  black  averted  head.  "  Well !  the  world  of  Paris 
has  emptied  itself  upon  you  in  your  new-year  gifts.    And 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         39 1 

what  pleasure  do  they  give  you — all  these  jeweled  cases, 
all  these  splendid  trifles  ?" 

She  smiled  :  the  smile  that  in  his  eyes  had  no  light. 

"  Pleasure  1  Do  you  think  me  a  child  still,  to  take 
pleasure  in  those  bagatelles  ;  they  are  only  custom." 

"Ah !  And  yet  to  have  such  things  of  custom,  or  the 
like,  men  will  barter  their  honesty  and  women  their 
honor.  That  is  droll  I  Which  is  the  richer?  he  who  has 
but  little  but  enjoys  all,  or  he  who  has  much  but  with  all 
is  sated  ?  A  few  years  since  how  your  heart  panted  for 
such  '  bagatelles.'  Yet,  then  a  wreath  of  river-lilies,  a 
leaf  full  of  wild  strawberries,  made  you  glad.  Which  was 
the  richer — your  present  or  your  past?" 

"  Which  ?  How  strange  a  question  !  There  can  be 
little  doubt,  I  imagine.  Though  I  have  lost  a  child's  love 
for  new-year  presents,  there  are  many " 

"Costlier  toys?  Men's  love  and  peace  and  honor? 
Yes :  there  are,  for  women  snch  as  you.  But,  Duchess 
Viva,  once  you  broke  and  trod  upon  a  grape  garland,  and 
when  you  had  destroyed  it,  wept  vain  tears  over  the 
bruised  leaves.     Take  heed  you  never  do  so  with  a  life." 

"  The  poor  grape  garland  1"  she  said,  with  a  careless, 
low  laugh,  avoiding  the  rest  of  his  speech.  "  I  remember 
it,  and  my  foolish  passion,  too  ;  but  it  reminds  me  to  ask 
you — the  dear  old  woman — 'grand'mere,' — is  she  well  ?" 

"  Yes.     She  is  well,"  he  answered  gravely. 

"She  has  always  had  my  money — my  presents?"  she 
asked  hurriedly,  a  hot  flush  coming  and  going  on  her 
face. 

"Yes:  she  received  them." 

"And  was  pleased  with  them  ?  I  sent  them  regularly, 
but  she  could  not  write  to  tell  me  whether  she  liked 
them." 

"You  remember  the  walnut  press  in  her  little  bed- 
room?" 

"  I  think  I  do— yes." 

"  Well ;  in  it  lie  all  your  gold  and  all  your  gifts.  She 
would  not  pain  }rou  by  returning  them:  but  neither  would 
she  use  alms  from  oik;  who,  for  so  many  years,  has  never 
cared  to  look  upon  her  face.  You  have  yet  to  learn  that 
money  cannot  heal  a  wound  that  negligence  has  dealt; 


392  TRICOTRIN, 

and  that  there  are  some  debts  which  cannot  be  repaid  in 
coin." 

The  color  deepened  in  her  face,  conscience  in  her  warred 
with  irritated  pride. 

"  That  is  absurd,"  she  murmured.  "  I  never  forgot  to 
supply  her  with  what  she  needed " 

"  She  needed  nothing,  except  the  one  thing  you  never 
gave  her  " 

"  1  should  have  gone  to  see  her,"  she  said  rapidly,  with 
an  unconscious  accent  of  apology  and  self-excuse.  "  But 
— so  many  things  engaged  me  ;  at  first  I  was  so  entirely 
under  their  rule,  and  latterly  I  have  been  abroad  so  very 
much.  I  will  go  down  and  visit  her  soon — as  soon  as 
the  days  are  somewhat  brighter." 

"You  have  said  that  long:  and — she  has  eighty-nine 
years.  The  spring  does  not  always  bring  new  life  to  the 
old  and  leafless  trees." 

She  was  silent :  he  had  stirred  her  heart,  but  he  did 
not  move  her  pride. 

He  took  up  the  Polichinelle,  true  to  his  habits  of  saying 
no  useless  words ;  and  he  was  reluctant  to  seek  for  the 
brave  old  woman  the  remembrance  that  was  not  instinct- 
ive and  born  of  gratitude. 

"My  old  friend  Punchinello?"  he  said,  "all  jeweled 
and  gold-laden,  too:  well,  puppets  as  empty,  and  less 
harmless  and  mirth-giving  than  he,  have  eaten  up  the  na- 
tion's gold  often  ere  now.  A  handsome  puppet,  moreover, 
which  all  crowned  marionettes  are  not." 

"I  bought  it  for  a  little  Russian  prince — the  son  of 
great  friends  of  mine." 

"Ah!    And  it  cost?" 

"Seven  hundred  francs." 

Tricotrin  shook  the  toy  lightly,  till  the  little  turqtioise- 
studded  bells  rang  a  chime. 

"  So,  Punch ! — you  lie  in  a  silk  and  eider-down  box, 
and  cost  seven  hundred  francs.  Pie,  fie !  Why,  you  are 
almost  as  costly  and  useless  as  a  king  ! — you,  too,  who 
have  made  fun  for  the  people  everywhere  ever  since  the 
days  of  Rome.  Punch — the  Russian  boy  will  break  you 
in  ten  minutes ;  and  outside  the  gates  yonder  I  met  a 
girl,  once  your  mistress's  playmate,  Edmee  Roxal,  whose 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         393 

son  lies  dead  in  her  arms  because  she  had  not  money  to 
buy  him  a  loaf.  Contrasts  are  sharp  in  this  world,  Punch  ! 
and  the  populace  that  you  have  wagged  your  head  for 
through  so  many  generations  has  always  got  steel  or 
shot  if  it  ventured  to  find  that  out,  and  object  to  it  once 
in  awhile." 

She  looked  up ;  and  shook  hurriedly  out  a  shower  of 
gold  from  her  purse. 

"  Edmee  Roxal? — her  child  dead  of  want  ?  How  fear- 
ful !     Give  her  those !" 

He  put  them  gently  back. 

"No.  They  are  not  wanted  now.  Money  will  not 
buy  back  from  King  Death.  And— for  Edmee  herself; 
she  lies  in  hospital,  delirious,  clinching  the  stiffened  limbs 
of  the  infant  to  her  breast.  Neither  you  nor  Polichinelle 
can  help  that:  only — when  you  give  so  much  for  him  and 
bis  kind, — think  of  these  things,  and  of  your  safe  haven 
from  them  !" 

"But  we  never  do  think  of  these  things!" 

There  were  carelessness,  regret,  impatience,  apology, 
all  in  the  words:  she,  beautiful,  luxurious,  adored,  had 
wholly  ceased  to  rem  ember  that  a  time  had  been  when 
"these  things"  would  have  been  her  portion  also,  in  all 
their  cruelty  and  nakedness,  had  not  his  hand  been 
stretched  to  rescue  her. 

"True,"  he  said,  simply,  "you  never  do." 

To  him  it  was  not  possible  to  recall  that  time  to  her; 
since,  to  awaken  her  soul  to  gratitude  for  the  mercies  of 
ber  fate,  he  must  also  have  called  on  gratitude  for  himself. 

"But  when  this  girl— Edmee — is  well  again,  let  me 
give  her  all  that  can  comfort  her? — give  it  through  you?" 
she  said  quickly.  "You  will  say  nothing  of  who  I 
tun " 

"I  promised  you  silence  long  ago.  I  never  justified 
you  in  supposing  that  my  promises  were  given  to  be 
broken."  » 

There  was  a  sternness  in  the  answer  that  moved  ber 
with  a  certain  sense  that  was  almosl  ns  of  fear:  the 
greatness,  the  singularity,  the  mysteries  of  this  lite,  thai 
had  so  long  been  interwoven  with  her  own,  bewildered 
her:  she  could  not  comprehend  them. 


394  TRICOTRIN, 

He  rose ;  and  stood  before  her,  gazing  at  her  with  a 
look  under  which  her  eyes  sank.  Little  by  little  she  had 
been  drawn  away  from  him,  till  between  them  scarcely  a 
bond  remained.  The  thought  crossed  him — would  he 
after  all  haye  been  so  selfishly  in  error,  so  blind  through 
the  mists  of  passion,  if  he  had  kept  her,  through  her 
ignorance,  in  his  own  hands,  under  his  own  law  and  love? 
Would  he  not  have  made  her  happiness  purer,  her  life 
truer,  her  future  safer,  because  nearer  God,  than  they 
now  were  ;  brilliant,  imperious,  pampered,  exquisite  creat- 
ure though  she  was?  She  was  great,  she  was  lovely, 
she  was  content,  she  was  unrivaled  ;  but  where  was  that 
"divine  nature"  wherewith  he  had  once  believed  her 
dowered  ? 

"  Where  are  your  thoughts  now  ?"  she  asked  him  once 
again ;  restless  beneath  that  fixed  and  melancholy  regard 
which  she  could  not  meet. 

A  sigh  escaped  him  as  he  answered : 

"  Pondering  whether  the  Duchess  de  Lira,  great  in  all 
magnificence  though  she  be,  may  not  after  all  be  poorer 
than  was  the  child  Viva,  happy  in  the  simple  wealth  of 
the  honey,  and  the  chestnuts,  and  the  violets  from  the 
woods  !" 

"  I  could  wish  you  could  permit  me  to  forget  that  such 
a  child  ever  lived  !" 

The  impatient  and  cruel  words  were  uttered,  heedless 
how  they  struck  him,  in  a  moment  of  haughty  wrath  that 
this  obscure  and  nameless  past  could  be  quoted  against 
her,  that  in  her  path  of  roses  this  one  thorn  should  be 
still  beneath  her  feet.  She  had  ever  clung  passionately 
to  the  belief  of  some  mighty  origin  having  given  her 
birth  :  for  the  last  years  she  had  shut  out  from  her  own 
sight  the  remembrance  that  she  had  ever  been  other  than 
she  now  was.  She  spoke  on  the  spur  of  pride,  selfish- 
ness, offended  dignity :  she  did  not  feel  the  baseness  and 
the  cowardice  of  her  utterance.    * 

His  mouth  quivered  under  the  fullness  of  its  snowy 
silken  beard. 

"Have  I  seemed  to  remind  you  of  it?  Forgive  me. 
There  is  nothing  for  you  to  remember; — farewell !" 

He  bowed  his  head ;  and  laid  down  upon  her  hands  a 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         395 

cluster  of  white  and  purple  violets;  lovelier  amid  the 
darkness  of  their  broad  round  leaves,  than  all  the  jeweled 
trifles  of  art  and  fashion  strewn  about  her. 

"  Others  give  you  gold  and  diamonds,"  he  said  wearily. 
"I  have  nothing  but  these.  Only, — remember  for  once 
enough  of  your  childhood  to  take  them  from  me  as  I 
give." 

He  turned  quickly  from  her  to  spare  himself  and  her 
all  need  of  answer;  but  the  love  which  had  once  lived  so 
strongly  in  her  heart  was  not  wholly  petrified  into  death ; 
the  nature  which  bad  been  so  long  attuned  to  his,  could 
not  but  vibrate  in  some  measure  to  his  touch. 

She  rose  swiftly  ;  the  look  of  bygone  years  in  her  eyes, 
the  accent  of  bygone  years  in  her  voice.  She  stretched 
her  hands  out  to  him  with  all  the  sweet  and  contrite 
grace  of  her  early  penitence  and  supplication. 

"  Oh  !  do  not  think  me  so  vile  as  I  make  myself  seem  ! 
I  have  not  forgotten  ;  I  never  forget  in  my  heart.  It  is 
the  world  that  makes  me  sin  against  you ;  the  coldest, 
vainest,  basest,  weakest  part  of  me.  I  know  how  cold, 
how  false,  how  guilty  I  must  seem  to  you ;  and  I  have 
been  so  I  But  these  flowers  are  dearer  to  me  than  all 
their  jewels,  and  for  my  crimes  to  you  I  hate  myself.  To 
meet  you  thus, — to  be  severed  from  you  thus, — to  live  as 
though  I  owed  you  nothing, — as  though  I  had  forgotten 
your  matchless  goodness,  your  infinite  mercy, — I  think 
that  I  must  be  the  guiltiest  thing  on  earth  !" 

All  the  ingenuous  contrition,  all  the  wayward  inconsist- 
encies, all  the  native  tenderness,  all  the  warm  and  sud- 
den  self-reproach,  which  had  been  characteristic  of  her 
childhood,  were  on  her  now,  shattering  down  the  pride  of 
an  imperious  egotism.  For  the  moment  she  forgot  all 
that  had  divorced  them,  for  the  moment  she  was  to  him 
all  that  she  once  had  been.  For  that  moment  an  ecstasy 
glistened  in  bis  eyes, — to  die  the  next. 

He  took  her  outstretched  hands,  and  touched  them  once, 
lightlj  .  willi  his  lips: 

"  You  have  do  sins  to  me.  And — if  you  had,  did  I  not 
long  since  promise  you  pardon '(  Your  better  nature  is 
DOf  dead  in  you;  cherish  it  still,  it  will  be  greater  riches 
to  you  than  your  gold." 


39G  TRICOTRIN, 

And  then,  he  turned  and  left  her. 

With  the  violets  lying  in  her  lap  she  sat  long,  motion- 
less, and  alone. 

"  Have  I  deserved  to  be  what  I  am?"  she  questioned, 
the  rare  voice  of  remorse  speaking  in  her  soul.  She  knew 
only  too  well  that  she  had  not. 

Yonder,  in  the  vine  country,  in  the  little  river-house, 
the  woman  who  had  nurtured  and  fostered  her  in  her  in- 
fancy was  left  to  loneliness,  and  sorrow,  and  old  age,  un- 
solaced. 

Across  the  Alps,  in  the  City  of  the  Dead,  was  the  soli- 
tary mausoleum  of  the  husband  to  whom  she  owed  every 
renown,  pleasure,  and  glory  that  now  illumined  her  life, 
and  whose  vast,  mute,  boundless  love  had  served  her  in 
tenderness  and  in  humility,  unrecompensed  even  by  a 
caress  as  fond  as  that  she  gave  her  dogs. 

And  out  from  her  presence  had  just  passed  the  man  to 
whom  her  whole  existence  was  one  long  ingratitude. 

"  Have  I  deserved  to  be  what  I  am  ?"  she  thought. 
"  Have  I  not  been  base — base — base  ?" 

And  she  knew  herself  to  be  so. 

All  her  life,  since  the  time  that  she  had  voluntarily  gone 
from  him,  had  been  one  long  ingratitude  against  him.  She 
knew  it  whenever  she  paused  to  think ;  but  thought  had 
so  little  place  in  her  shadowless  life. 

All  things  had  gone  well  with  this  fairest  daughter  of 
Hazard.  Accident,  which  seemed  her  progenitor,  bad 
been  ever  her  protector.  Fortune  and  all  its  chances  had 
been  gracious  to  her. 

She  had  left  her  early  life  as  far  behind  her  as  the  beau- 
tiful, glittering,  ephemeral  winged  insect  of  a  tropic  sum- 
mer leaves  its  larvae  bed,  in  the  closed  cup  of  a  poppy  or 
a  lotus,  as  it  wings  its  way  high  into  air  and  sunlight. 
That  she — she  so  great,  so  worshiped,  so  irresponsible, 
so  widely  courted,  so  habituated  to  idolatry  and  power 
and  all  the  ways  of  wealth — could  ever  have  been  that 
Waif  and  Stray  whereof  he  spoke,  seemed  as  impossible 
to  her  as  it  is  to  the  full-plumed  aphis  glancing  in  the  sun 
to  recall  the  season  of  its  chrysalis  slumber. 

She ! — the  most  beautiful  woman  of  her  world  and  of 
her  age — had  once  been  that  foundling  child,  reared  by  a 


TITE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         397 

peasant,  succored  by  a  bohemian,  dwelling  under  a  cot- 
tage roof,  and  made  happy  by  a  gleaner's  treasury  of 
scattered  cornstalks,  by  a  peasant's  gold  of  honey  and 
yellow  gourds,  by  an  infant's  jewel  store  of  morning  dew- 
drops  and  of  blue  forget-me-nots! 

It  was  bitter  to  her  to  think  it ;  to  have  the  memory 
of  it  forced  upon  her ;  and  she  paced  to  and  fro  the 
length  of  her  chamber,  with  restless,  uneven  steps,  as 
she  remembered  that,  thrust  this  fact  away  far  down  into 
oblivion  as  she  would,  the  fact  still  lived,  and  could  not 
be  destroyed :  with  all  her  wealth,  with  all  her  empire, 
this  fact  was  stronger  than  herself,  and  could  not  be  abol- 
ished by  her  will. 

It  was  the  one  canker  in  her  ever-blossoming  roses; 
the  one  ghost  within  her  joyous  palaces;  the  one  bitter 
drop  in  her  wine--cup's  ruby  light. 

The  canker  was  at  her  heart,  the  ghost  within  her  walls, 
the  bitterness  upon  her  lips,  in  this  moment  when  the  odor 
of  the  snow-born  flowers  wafted  the  memories  of  her  buried 
childhood  to  her. 

Life  had  been  so  fair  to  her.  The  years  had  gone  by 
in  one  continual  blaze  of  triumph,  in  one  continual  hymn 
of  rejoicing.  She  was  great ;  she  was  unrivaled  ;  she  was 
satiated  with  offered  love.  What  else  could  make  the 
paradise  of  a  woman?  From  the  hour  when  she  had 
cried,  "  The  fairies  have  remembered  me  at  last  1"  the 
fairies  had  never  again  deserted  her. 

From  the  hour  in  which  her  selection  had  been  made,  all 
things  had  led  her  to  her  new  existence,  all  things  divorced 
her  from  her  old:  and  no  sigh  for  all  she  had  abandoned 
ever  grated  on  the  ear  of  those  who  had  made  her  what 
she  had  become. 

The  haughty  temper  and  far-reaching  vision  of  the  aged 
aristocrat  had  environed  with  scrupulous  care  this  child 
of  Chance,  in  whom  her  prescience  foresaw  the  future 
bearer  of  her  oame. 

She  bad  bent  all  her  skill  and  all  her  energies  to  con- 
ceal from  the  world  that  the  creature  she,  adopted  was 
the  offspring  of  Hazard,  nurtured  on  alms;  ami  to  make 
of  her  a  woman  so  perfect  that  the  mosl  critical  should 
discover  no  flaw  in  her  grace  or  her  beaut  v.  in  her  acts 

34 


398  TRIC0TR1N, 

or  her  thoughts.  And  she  had  been  perfectly  successful. 
Swiftly  and  easily,  all  the  precepts  that  an  unyielding 
pride  could  teach,  all  the  impress  that  an  exquisite  ele- 
gance could  make,  were  stamped  on  the  facile  wax  of  a 
temperament  already  akin  to  them.  To  Viva,  nothing  of 
greatness  seemed  either  new  or  strange.  Rank  was  no 
King  Cophetua  to  her,  and  she  no  beggar  maiden.  She 
was  only  a  long-dethroned  princess  rightly  reinstated  in 
her  sovereignty.  There  was  no  need  to  dread  her  self- 
betrayal.  She  wore  her  purples  as  though  born  to  them; 
and  even  her  patrician  instructress  was  compelled  to 
murmur  to  herself,  "  If  a  bastard — surely  one  of  some 
imperial  race,  such  as  there  sits  not  in  these  days  on  the 
fool-filled  thrones  of  Europe." 

Travel,  culture,  change  of  scene,  learning  made  graceful 
and  alluring,  all  that  could  be  brought  to  the  moulding 
of  her  mind  and  tastes  were  given  her.  She  was  kept  in 
seclusion  and  in  foreign  countries  some  few  years  ;  she 
was  baptized  by  the  Church  with  a  long  bead-roll  of 
saintly  names,  the  priests  not  questioning  their  liberal 
patroness ;  she  was  changed  into  that  brilliant  empress 
which  education  and  wealth,  and  an  artificial  atmosphere, 
and  all  the  pomps  and  graces  of  wealth,  can  make  out  of 
any  lovely,  vivacious,  and  impressionable  child. 

At  times,  even  the  cold,  and  courtly,  ever-sarcastic  old 
woman  could  have  wished  for  a  shade  more  warmth,  a 
touch  more  earnestness  in  this  glittering  volatile  thing 
that  radiated  round  her,  and  seemed  never  to  be  moved 
to  any  sense  of  debt  or  gratitude,  but  only  to  the  buoyant 
exultant  sense  of  victory  and  of  fair  fortune.  But  she 
wished  for  them  in  vain  :  the  only  one  who  could  have 
wakened  them  was  banished. 

And,  unconsciously,  in  her  sedulous  destruction  of  that 
one  pure,  ardent,  early  tenderness  in  the  young  girl's 
heart,  she  shaped  the  weapons  of  her  son's  martyrdom. 

When  at  length  the  silent  passion  that  he  had  struggled 
against  so  long  as  mere  selfish  and  vain  desire  was  con- 
quered, and  spoke,  and  offered  all  its  matchless  posses- 
sions, its  magnificent  gifts,  they  were  accepted  with  the 
smiling  indifference  of  a  fair,  pampered,  ambitious  creat- 
ure, who  conceived  that  the  donation  of  her  own  loveli- 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         399 

ness  balanced  all  debt  between  them,  yet  who,  insecure 
in  her  singular  fate,  saw  in  this  alliance  the  sole  possible 
passage  to  the  security  of  power. 

"  I  shall  be  the  Duchess  de  Lira!"  she  thought,  with  a 
haughty  smile  ;  if  she  thought  also  with  a  shuddering 
sigh,  "And  I  must  be  his  Wife  1" 

The  sudden  illness  and  death  of  her  protectress  hast- 
ened this  union  to  which  she  willingly  consented,  instinct- 
ively grasping  the  sole  scepter  that  was  stretched  out  to 
her ;  only  seeing  the  kingdom  that  lay  before  her  of  om- 
nipotence and  pleasure,  and  triumphant  vanity,  and  sure 
deliverance  from  all  future  chance  of  obscurity  or  humili- 
ation. The  marriage  sacrament  was  administered  beside 
the  death-bed  of  his  mother,  that  no  breath  of  slander,  no 
rumor  of  injurious  wonder,  might  ever  touch  the  fame  of 
the  one  who  henceforth  was  to  bear  a  title  illustrious  for 
centuries  among  the  princes  of  the  earth. 

And  the  tidings,  traveling  far  from  the  Austrian  city 
where  they  tarried,  went  in  the  sweet  spring  evening  to 
the  house  of  Mere  Rose. 

Attained  ambition  on  her  lips  was  no  Dead  Sea  fruit; 
but  an  enchanted  apple,  ever  fresh,  ruddy,  luscious. 

For  her  sake  her  lord  went  forth  from  the  seclusion 
he  had  so  long  preserved,  and  even  approached  a  court 
which  he  abhorred  as  the  court  of  an  usurper,  that  he 
might  show  her  to  that  great  world  for  which  she  so 
long  had  pined.  She  became  the  idol,  at  once  the  leader, 
the  reigning  beauty  of  her  sphere. 

Her  husband,  content  onlv  to  minister  to  her  wishes 
and  her  will,  grew  the  slave  to  her  idlest  caprice,  and  was 
grateful  for  her  slightest  smile.  For  a  second  time  an  im- 
measurable devotion  was  laid  subject  to  the  rule  of  her 
mutable  fancies;  this  time,  yet  more  than  the  first,  it  ut- 
terly failed  to  move  her  to  any  sense  of  its  priceless  value, 
it  was  only  regarded  as  a  means  to  the  end  of  her  own 
gratification. 

Intoxicated  with  homage,  applause,  indulgence,  ex- 
travagance, pleasure,  she  did  what  to  few  it  is  given  to 
do, — she  realized  her  wildest  dreams.  She  had  but  to 
wish,  and  she  possessed.  She  had  but  to  look,  and  she 
vanquished.     Her    conscience  was  stifled,  her  memory 


400  TRICOTRIN, 

was  killed,  her  heart  never  beat  but  with  the  throbs  of 
vanity  and  triumph;  love  had  no  peril  for  her,  for  she  had 
against  it  the  shield  of  an  all-absorbing  self-love. 

She  lived  as  exclusively  in  the  present,  and  as  abso- 
lutely for  herself,  as  the  brightest  humming-bird  that 
ever  wantoned  above  roses. 

She  had  once  had  purer  visions:  these  had  all  perished. 
Her  moral  ruin  was  not  less  rapid  and  complete  than 
were  her  social  ascent  and  her  absolute  domfnation. 

So  she  lived  her  life;  and  on  the  night  of  the  Dorian 
ball  her  husband  died,  in  silence  and  in  solitude. 

For  the  hour  the  impression  which  that  death  made  on 
her  was  vivid,  and  her  self-reproach  poignant. 

But  then  she  was  free, — absolutely  free. 

"Light-wedded,  and  light-widow'd,  and  unaware  of  any 
sort  of  sorrow." 

She  passed  out  once  more,  after  the  briefest  retirement 
that  custom  could  sanction,  into  the  noonday  blaze  of  the 
world  she  had  quitted,  tenfold  more  potent  now  than  ever  ; 
for  now  to  the  sorcery  of  her  smile  was  added  the  sorcery 
of  her  gold,  which  men  were  also  free  to  strive  and  win. 

No  living  creature  dreamed  that  in  the  great  French 
aristocrat  there  beat  the  same  pulses  that  had  throbbed  in 
the  young  limbs  of  the  Waif  and  Stray. 

To  keep  her  unseen  until  time  and  culture  had  so 
changed  her  that  there  was  no  fear  of  her  recognition  by 
the  keenest  eyes  that  had  ever  beheld  her,  had  been  the 
first  care  of  her  powerful  guardians.  Estmere,  and  the 
son  of  Estmere,  she  had  never  met ;  and  when  one  or 
two  of  the  young  nobles  who  had  been  at  the  banquet  of 
Coriolis,  and  might  have  recalled  some  likeness  in  her  to 
the  child  whom  they  had  there  beheld, — their  memories 
had  been  too  filled  with  the  fair  forsaken  faces  of  women 
for  them  to  heed  the  resemblance,  or  to  suspect  the  secret 
of  the  one  before  whom  they  bowed  so  low  in  homage. 

Vague  mystic  rumors  did  indeed  float  about  concerning 
her:  but  the  hand  of  her  imperious  protectress  had  been 
strong  enough  to  lift  her  high  above  suspicion;  and  many 
expedients  had  been  found  and  used,  with  keenest  tact, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         401 

to  supply  all  flaws,  and  smooth  all  strangeness,  in  her 
story. 

Yet,  although  all  others  had  so  completely  forgotten, 
she  could  not  utterly  forget ; — not  utterly,  with  those 
white  and  purple  flowers  lying  in  her  hands. 

That  time  had  been,  when  these  things,  and  such  things 
as  these,  gleaned  from  wood  and  pasture,  had  been  her 
only  treasures ;  when  she  had  owned  no  more  home,  or 
heritage,  or  food,  by  right,  than  such  as  the  bird,  forsaken 
of  its  flock,  can  make  and  find  from  tufts  of  grass,  and 
pods  of  seeding  flowers,  and  any  wind-blown  alms  of  na- 
ture. That  time  had  been ;  if  she  had  kept  its  memory 
in  her  heart  in  gratitude,  an  amulet  against  all  evil 
thoughts,  a  cross  to  recall  to  her  all  those  who  suffered, 
a  rosary  whereby  she  had  counted  her  faults,  her  follies, 
and  her  better  deeds,  it  had  been  blessed  to  her. 

As  it  was, — cast  scornfully  and  cruelly  aside,  as  some 
detested  thing  for  which  she  prayed  oblivion  and  annihi- 
lation,— it  might  some  day  rise  up  afcd  have  its  vengeance 
on  her. 

And  at  rare  times  she  feared  this,  with  a  fear  wholly 
foreign  to  her  high-couraged  and  imperious  temperament. 

The  fear  was  kindred  to  that  which  will  pursue  and 
move  a  monarch,  whose  passage  to  his  throne  has  been 
hewn  with  an  iron  blade  through  the  granite  of  gigantic 
crime,  and  whose  steps  have  waded  through  the  blood  of 
a  murdered  people  to  reach  the  diadem  of  his  desire. 

Was  it  not  over  the  lifeless  bodies  of  slaughtered  loves 
that  she,  also,  had  passed  to  her  victories,  and  to  her 
kingdom  ? 


34* 


402  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

That  night,  at  one  of  the  greatest  houses  of  Paris,  the 
most  exquisite  woman  of  its  courtly  assembly  bore  in  her 
hand  a  massive  cluster  of  simple  blue  and  white  violets — 
violets,  full  of  a  wild  forest  fragrance,  amid  the  exotics 
blossoming  there. 

"Are  they  for  the  sake  of  the  Past  madame?"  asked 
of  her  an  old  marshal,  whose  youth  had  known  Marengo 
and  Jena,  seeing  in  them  the  emblems  of  his  Chief. 

She  turned  her  eyes  on  him  with  a  look  her  lovers  had 
never  seen  in  them. 

"Yes !     They  are  for  the  sake  of  the  Past!" 

Those  around  her^wondered  eagerly  and  in  surprise 
what  Past  this  could  be  of  which  a  creature  so  young 
still  and  so  eminent  could  think  with  such  regret;  with 
her  it  could  not  be  they  knew  a  Bonapartist  memory. 

When  she  went  forth  to  her  carriage,  one  watcher 
standing  by,  unseen,  among  the  crowds,  caught  a  glimpse 
of  his  violets  in  her  clasp  of  jeweled  gold.  And  summer 
dawns  had  not  been  sweeter  to  him  than  the  bleak  and 
stormy  night  became, — she  had  enough  of  the  love  of  her 
childhood  to  treasure  his  flowers  thus  1 

The  remembrance  of  him,  slight  though  it  was,  sufficed 
to  send  back  warmth  and  gladness  to  his  heart ;  he  gave 
a  martyrdom  of  tenderness,  accounting  it  as  naught, — 
he  was  touched  to  passionate  thankfulness  by  this  one 
trivial  act. 

Thus  great  natures  ever  give,  and  ever  receive : — pour- 
ing out  their  gold  like  water,  and  into  their  garners  re- 
ceiving dross  in  exchange. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         403 


CHAPTER  XL. 

When  her  carriage  had  rolled  away,  Tricotrin  also  left 
the  gates,  and  went  far  away  through  the  Quarter  of  St. 
Martin,  up  toward  the  thieves'  nest  of  Chaumont. 

The  thrill  of  joy  which  had  quivered  through  him  as 
he  had  seen  the  violets  in  her  hand  and  in  her  bosom, 
faded  into  the  depression  which  ever  follows  a  hope  that 
is  unutterably  sweet,  yet  wholly  baseless,  and  which 
springs  up  only  to  perish  in  all  the  glory,  and  all  the  fra- 
gility of  the  evanescent  flower  that  only  blooms  for  a 
single  day. 

She  remembered  him  and  her  childhood, — that  was 
something.  But  she  was  divorced  from  him  forever;  and 
could  no  more  return  to  him  than  the  fruit,  gathered  in 
for  a  prince's  table,  can  return  to  the  moss-covered  branch, 
where  once  it  hung  in  a  country  orchard. 

He  had  known  that  this  would  be  so;  he  had  foreseen 
it  as  the  inevitable  sequel  of  that  choice  which  had  re- 
moved her  to  the  world  for  which  she  had  longed.  Not 
now  for  the  first  hour  was  its  truth  before  him.  He  had 
seen  it  with  each  time,  through  the  many  years  of  her 
separation  from  him,  that  he  had  looked  upon  her  and  had 
watched  the  actions  of  her  life.  But  it  had  never  struck 
on  him  so  strongly  or  so  vividly  as  when  he  had  beheld 
her  that  morning;  as  when,  in  every  gesture,  and  smile, 
and  glance,  in  every  languid  movement,  and  contempt- 
uous reply,  and  negligent  grace,  he  had  seen  how  wholly 
the  gay,  wayward,  innocent,  transparent  child,  that  he 
once  had  sheltered,  was  lost  in  the  patrician  woman  of 
the  world. 

He  bad  kept  aloof  from  her.  It  had  been  too  keen  a 
suffering  for  him  to  provoke  it.  He,  who  cast  all  pain 
from  him  on  the  impulse  of  a  joyous  nature  as  he  would 
have  cast  an  adder  from  his  arm,  could  not  voluntarily 
seek  the  torture  that  her  presence  was.     He  took  heed 


404  TRICOTRIN, 

that  she  was  content ;  he  assured  himself  that  her  own 
desires  were  the  guide  she  followed ;  he  kept  vigil,  how 
constant  and  how  deeply  penetrating  she  did  not  dream, 
over  all  the  changes  of  her  life.  But,  once  having  seen 
that  it  was  well  with  her,  once  having  learned  that  in  her 
servitude  to  ambition  she  only  embraced  the  success  that 
she  craved,  he  sought  her  presence  little. 

During  the  years  that  her  husband  lived  she  never  saw 
the  face  of  the  man  she  had  forsaken,  though,  once  or 
twice,  amid  deep  garden  ways  in  Italy,  or  on  the  waters 
of  old  Teutonic  streams,  she  had  heard — or  had  thought 
that  she  heard — the  music  that  she  had  loved  in  the  days 
of  her  childhood.  And  in  such  moments,  under  the  spell 
of  that  sweet  and  distant  melody,  her  eyes  had  filled  with 
sudden  tears,  and  her  heart  with  sudden  yearning,  and 
the  vague  sense  of  a  loss,  irrevocable  and  endless,  had 
come  over  her. 

Their  lives  had  drifted  asunder,  as  two  boats  drift  north 
and  south  on  a  river,  the  distance  betwixt  them  growing 
longer  and  longer  with  each  beat  of  the  oars  and  each 
sigh  of  the  tide.  And  for  the  lives  that  part  thus,  there 
is  no  reunion.  One  floats  out  to  the  open  and  sunlit 
sea;  and  one  passes  away  to  the  grave  of  the  stream. 
Meet  again  on  the  river  they  cannot. 

His  heart  was  weary  as  he  went. 

Could  he  have  served  her  he  had  been  content.  But 
what  need  or  what  call  for  service  could  there  be  in  this 
fate  so  royal,  so  shadowless,  so  eminent,  so  coldly  and  so 
radiantly  clear  ?  She  had  wealth,  and  had  the  world  at 
her  feet;  she  had  empire,  and  had  no  wish  unfulfilled; 
she  had  youth,  and  had  all  things  that  render  youth  glo- 
rious. What  space  in  such  a  life  was  there  for  love  to  fill  ? 
She  had  need  of  nothing.  She  had  the  armies  that  con- 
quer, she  had  the  sorcery  that  transmutes,  she  had  the 
smile  that  makes  fate  smile  back  in  answer.  What  appeal 
in  such  a  life  was  there  for  aid  or  succor? 

Once  he  had  promised  her  that  though  she  should  return 
to  him  sin-stained,  wretched,  broken-hearted,  driven  from 
every  refuge,  and  shrinking  from  every  glance,  yet  would 
he  not  forsake  her,  but  would  shelter  her  with  his  tender- 
ness still.     But  a  sterner  trial  than  this  tore  the  strength 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         405 

of  his  love  at  its  roots.     He  had  to  stand  outside  the 
golden  gates  of  her  paradise, — forgotten. 

Not  rare  on  this  earth  is  the  love  that  cleaves  to  the 
thing  it  has  cherished  through  guilt,  and  through  wrong, 
and  through  misery.  But  rare,  indeed,  is  the  love  that 
still  lives  while  its  portion  is  oblivion,  and  the  thing  which 
it  has. followed  passes  away  out  to  a  joy  that  it  cannot 
share,  to  a  light  that  it  cannot  behold. 

For  this  is  as  the  love  of  a  god,  which  forsakes  not,  though 
its  creatures  revile,  and  blaspheme,  and  deride  it. 

His  heart  was  weary  within  him  as  he  went  through 
the  dreary  way;  the  night  was  bitter  and  full  of  storms. 
The  snow-clouds  hovered  unbroken,  but  the  wind  was 
wild  and  chill  as  ice,  and  ever  and  again  a  gust  of  rain 
swept  with  shrill  passion  over  the  half-frozen  ground,  and 
dulled  the  few  lights  burning. 

lie  had  come  into  the  quarter  of  the  poor,  and  into  the 
hotbede  of  crime,  through  the  maze  of  crooked  streets  and 
swarming  tenements  that  were  alive  with  guilt  as  an  ant- 
hill with  its  insect-swarm,  while,  furthermost,  the  cavern- 
ous rocks  of  Chaumont  sheltered  every  sin  and  every  lust 
in  their  hideous  recesses.*  It  was  ever  thus  that  he  ex- 
orcised his  dark  hours.  Yet,  to-night,  the  heart-sickness 
of  every  poet  and  every  leafier  of  the  world  was  on  him, 
too  heavily  for  even  the  justice  of  truth,  or  the  purity  of 
labor,  to  have  worth  in  his  sight. 

"  What  avail  ?"  he  thought.  "  What  avail  to  strive  to 
bring  men  nearer  to  the  right  ?  They  love  their  darkness 
best, — why  not  leave  them  to  it?  Age  after  age  the  few 
cast  away  their  lives  striving  to  raise  and  to  ransom  the 
many.  What  use?  Juvenal  scourg-cd  Home, — and  the 
same  vices  that  his  stripes  lashed  then,  laugh  triumphant 
in  Paris  to-day  I  The  satirist,  and  the  poet,  and  the 
prophet  strain  their  voices  in  vain  as  the  crowds  rush  on  ; 
they  are  drowned  in  the  chorus  of  mad  sins  and  sweel 
falsehoods!  Oh  God!  the  waste  of  hope,  the  waste  of 
travail,  the  waste  of  pure  desire,  the  waste  of  high 
ambitions  ! — nothing  endures  but  the  well-spring  of  lies 

*  It  is  Deedless  t<>  recall  that  thia  vile  place  has  been  by  the  late 

imperial  works  changed  into  a  .spot  of  healthful  rccrcution  and 
great  beauty. 


406  TRICOTRIN, 

that  ever  rises  afresh,  and  the  bay-tree  of  sin  that  is  green, 
and  stately,  and  deathless !" 

Yet — though  in  that  hour  he  saw  the  vanity  of  labor, 
the  futility  of  effort,  the  helplessness  of  truth  against  the 
massed  evils  and  armored  insincerities  of  the  world,  as 
men  in  their  hours  of  loneliness  must  ever  behold  them, — 
yet,  he  went  onward  into  the  Gehenna  whither  his  steps 
tended. 

Above,  and  hidden  in  the  huge  dens  of  the  rocks, 
assassins,  and  brigands,  and  ravishers  brooded  and  glut- 
ted over  their  golden  spoil  or  their  writhing  prey  ;  and  in 
tHe  horrible  streets  that  lay  below,  naked  children  and 
half-naked  women  fought  and  tore  at  each  other  like  mad 
dogs,  songs  of  riotous  blasphemy  were  crossed  by  the  din 
of  drunken  combatants,  and  hideous  misery  with  hideous 
obscenity  struggled  which  should  be  king  regnant  there. 

The  rocks  towered  up  against  the  black  starless  skies, 
silent  because,  screened  in  their  caverns,  men,  who  had 
changed  to  devils,  hoarded  stolen  treasure,  and  stifled  tell- 
tale shrieks,  and  crushed  out  panting  life  all  noiselessly, 
and  strove  to  find  some  new  variety  of  lust.  But  in  the 
quarter  of  the  town  beneath  them  there  was  a  loud  tumult- 
uous hell,  in  which  sex  and  age  were  alike  forgotten,  and 
confounded  in  one  pit  of  shameless  shame  : — a  pit  where 
human  lives  were  pent  together  in  gasping  droves,  as  if 
they  had  lost  all  semblance  of  humanity  ;  where  one  vast 
caldron  of  iniquity  seethed  on  and  on  forever,  forever 
fed  afresh.  It  is  in  such  social  bodies  as  these  that  the 
cancer  of  the  world  throbs  and  poisons  all  that  it  infects, 
and  taints  even  that  which  is  in  health — a  cancer  whose 
sole  attempted  cure  is  now  and  then  a  random  cut  from 
the  knife  of  evil  power,  that  leaves  it  wider  spread  than 
ever,  covered,  insidious,  deadly  with  the  germs  of  an 
eternal  death. 

As  the  imprecations,  the  screams,  the  yells,  the  laughter 
worse  than  any  curses,  the  songs  that  had  so  utter  a' 
depravity  m  them,  the  cries  of  young  children    under 
brutal  blows,  beat  on  his  ear  where  he  approached  Chau- 
mont,  a  great  softness,  a  great  pity  came  into  his  eyes. 

"  God-forgotten,  they  call  you  1"  he  murmured.  "  Rather 
man-forsaken." 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         401 

He  was  unarmed  ;  he  penetrated  into  a  quarter  where 
death  waited  for  any  honest  man  who  durst  venture  his  life 
there  ;  he  came  among  ravening  wolves,  to  whom  murder 
was  pastime,  and  cruelty  joy.  But  he  walked  on,  with 
the  careless  courage  of  his  nature.  Fear  was  as  far  from 
him  as  from  any  eagle  of  the  Engadine  ;  and,  moreover, 
these  wolves  were  as  faithful  dogs  to  him,  caressing  his 
hand  where  they  bit  through  to  the  bone  of  every  other. 
To  him  they  were  tame,  and  were  loyal.  He  lashed  them 
with  scorn ;  he  scourged  them  with  reproach ;  many  a 
time  he  seized  their  prey  from  out  their  very  jaws ;  he 
stood  between  them  and  their  passions ;  and  he  braved 
them  openly  in  their  maddest  rage.  But  they  never  lifted 
their  weapons  against  him,  and  in  their  most  furious 
moods  he  was  sacred  to  them.  They  knew  well  that 
there  was  love  and  not  hate  in  his  soul ;  and  they  uncon- 
sciously revered  what  they  could  not  comprehend, — this 
courage  which  only  feared  sin,  this  pity  which  could  em- 
brace even  guilt,  this  manhood  that  had  every  strength, 
and  boldness,  and  liberty  that  they  honored,  and  yet  was 
so  pure  from  crime,  and  so  stainless  from  shame. 

He  knew  that  he  was  safe  amid  them.  Had  he  not 
known  it  he  would  have  gone  thither  just  the  same.  It 
was  not  in  his  blood  to  study  caution,  or  dread  peril ; 
many  a  time,  with  his  back  against  a  wall  and  the  haft  of 
a  knife  against  his  chest,  he  had  kept  a  score  of  desperate 
brutes  at  bay,  refusing  to  relinquish  them  their  victim. 
Aud  he  who  loved  sunlight,  and  mirth,  and  the  smile  in 
women's  eyes,  and  the  gay  recklessness  of  artist  life,  and 
the  beauty  of  a  summer  world,  came  into  the  hells  of  gnat 
cities  on  that  simple,  unflinching  duty  to  humanity,  which 
was  a  law  tin'  bohemian  and  the  wanderer  never  broke. 
Those  whom  the  world  east  out  he  made;  his  brethren; 
and,  if  once  in  a  thousand  times  of  trial  it  was  giveD  him 
to  raise  a  sinking  soul  from  the  abyss  into  the  purer 
upper  air  of  earth,  he  was  content;  he  earned  the  only 
wage  he  asked. 

"They  shudder  when  they  read  of  the  Huns  and  the 
Ostrogoths  pouring  down  into  Rome,"  he  mused,  as  he 
passed  toward  the  pandemonium.  "They  keep  a  horde 
as  savage,  imprisoned  in  their  midst,  buried  in  the  very 


408  TRICOTRIN, 

core  of  their  capitals,  side  by  side  with  their  churches  and 
palaces,  and  never  remember  the  earthquake  that  would 
whelm  them  if  once  the  pent  volcano  burst,  if  once  the 
black  mass  covered  below  took  flame  and  broke  to  the 
surface !  Statesmen  multiply  their  prisons,  and  strengthen 
their  laws  against  the  crime  that  is  done — and  they  never 
take  the  canker  out  of  the  bud,  they  never  save  the  young 
child  from  pollution.  Their  political  economy  never  studies 
prevention ;  it  never  cleanses  the  sewers,  it  only  curses 
the  fever-stricken!" 

A  hideous  clangor  broke  in  on  his  ear  as  he  went,  lost 
in  thought,  and  unheeding  the  din  that  he  knew  so  well, 
worse  than  the  roar  of  a  million  wild  beasts.  This  clamor 
was  shriller,  viler,  more  horrible  than  common ;  it  caught 
his  attention,  and  lifting  bis  head,  he  saw  at  some  little 
distance  a  red  resinous  glare. 

"  Murder  is  being  done ;  they  are  never  so  joyous  over 
aught  else,"  he  muttered,  as  he  hastened  his  steps.  He 
was  no  optimist  to  deem  his  wolves  slandered  sheep  ;  he 
knew  them  as  they  were,  in  all  their  blackest,  hardest, 
most  hopeless  guilt. 

He  soon  came  within  sight  of  the  fire  ;  a  bonfire  blazing 
in  a  pent  dark  court,  and  throwing  its  glow  on  the  rocks 
beyond,  while  about  it  hundreds  of  living  creatures 
swarmed,  and  shrieked,  and  sang,  and  raved,  and  danced 
in  a  saturnalia  of  devils'  joy.  A  rabble  of  brigands  with 
bare  chests  and  great  arms  black  with  filth,  of  women 
disheveled,  unclothed,  yelling  like  furies,  of  gaunt  beggars 
with  their  filthy  rags  flying  in  the  wind,  and  their  long  lean 
knives  glancing  in  the  air,  of  children  leaping  and  scream- 
ing with  delight,  surrounded  the  pile  of  blazing  wood  that 
burned  only  the  fiercer  for  the  falling  hail  that  hissed  in 
its  smoke.  And  above  it,  hung  there  to  consume  by  slow 
degrees,  suspended  by  an  iron  chain  knotted  about  his 
waist,  and  fastened  to  an  iron  spout  in  a  wall,  swaying 
in  the  wind,  and  uttering  awful  cries,  swung  a  living 
human  figure. 

This  was  the  bacchanalia  they  enjoyed  in  the  bitter 
wintry  night. 

"Ah-ah!  How  bright  he  will  burnl"  screamed  a  little 
five-year  child,  dancing  in  ecstasv  at  the  finest  firework 
she  had  ever  beheld. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  409 

Tricotrin  gave  a  glance  at  the  blackened  form,  as  its 
chain-halter  cracked  and  shook  in  the  wind:  then  threw 
himself  with  a  leap  like  a  stag's  among  the  throng,  seized 
a  knife  from  the  hand  of  a  boy  ere  the  lad  could  resist, 
sprang  on  to  a  broad  stone  coping  on  the  wall,  stretched 
up,  seized  the  wretch  by  his  waist-chain,  cut  the  cord  that 
knotted  the  iron  links  to  the  projecting  spout,  and  dragged 
him  down  on  to  the  ledge  where  he  himself  stood.  All 
was  clone  in  an  instant,  ere  they  knew  what  he  did:  they 
were  silent  in  supreme  amaze. 

Then  a  roar  broke  from  all  the  crowd  as  with  one  voice ; 
a  roar  like  a  herd  of  hyenas  cheated  of  their  carcass-prey ; 
they  loved  him  in  their  own  fashion,  but  they  loved 
slaughter  more,  and  they  hungered  fiercely  for  that 
splendid  human  bonfire. 

"  Give  him  to  us!"  they  yelled,  while  twice  a  hundred 
knives  glittered  in  the  glare. 

He  stood  above  them,  on  the  stone,  above  the  stifling, 
resinous,  scorching  pyramid  of  flame:  the  creature  he 
had  rescued  lying  at  his  feet.  All  his  life  and  ardor  had 
flashed  back  into  his  face  with  the  need  of  action  ;  his  eyes 
blazed  with  scorn  and  passion  ;  his  white  abundant  hair 
blew  backward  in  the  wind;  his  fearless  gaze  unflinching 
met  the  glare  of  the  upturned,  bloodshot,  thirsty,  mur- 
derous eyes. 

"Give  him  to  you!"  he  echoed  in  their  own  parlance, 
which  he  spoke  with  rapidity  and  ease.  "Am  I  vile  as 
yourselves,  think  you  ?     What  was  his  offense  ?" 

The  rush  of  thundering  voices  hissed  out,  as  with  a 
single  breath,  the  story  of  the  criminal;  a  new  comrade, 
a  puny  creature,  stealthy  as  the  cat,  timid  as  the  hare, 
who  had  joined  them  for  awhile,  only  to  spy  on  them  and 
to  betray  them  to  the  law:  a  traitor  that  deserved  ten 
thousand  deaths  drawn  out  in  years  of  torture. 

Tricotrin  heard:  the  red  light  fell  upon  him  as  he  looked 
down  on  the  riot  that  seethed  beneath  him,  and  on  the 
knives  that  menaced  him  it'  he  did  ool  yield. 

"A  dark  guilt,  truly,"  he  said  with  brevity,  as  his  mel- 
low voice  rang  clear  through  the  din.  "  Bui  you  are  not 
fit  for  its  judges.  Fine  fellows,  indeed,  to  sit  in  the  judg- 
ment-seat— you  who  would  be  shot  or  guillotiued,  every 

35 


410  TRICOTRIN, 

one  of  you,  if  you  but  had  your  deserts.  What  do  you 
call  yourselves — devils,  tigers,  or  men?  You  have  no 
claim  to  the  last  name!  A  spy  is  a  thing  as  foul  as  a 
viper,  I  grant;  but  not  to  be  burnt  alive  for  all  that,  and 
you  are  too  utter  blackguards  yourselves  to  have  any  right 
left  in  you  to  punish.  Two  hundred  men,  too,  against 
one — glorious  equality !  For  shame,  you  hellhounds  ;  I 
knew  you  were  brutes  when  the  bloodthirst  was  on  you, 
but  I  did  not  guess  till  now  you  were  cowards !" 

He  knew  how  to  deal  with  them, — as  Dumouriez  dealt 
with  his  mutinous  battalions.  The  fiery  scorn,  the  con- 
temptuous invective,  the  dauntless  censure  struck  them 
dumb,  where  other  words  would  have  excited  their  mock- 
ery, or  inflamed  their  passions.  The  silence  did  not  last 
long  ;  they  were  in  furious  hatred  of  their  prey,  they  were 
in  ravening  longing  for  their  sport ;  they  closed  nearer 
and  nearer,  stretching  out  their  gaunt  hands  to  seize,  and 
lifting  their  knives  in  the  air. 

"(live  him  to  us!"  they  shouted  again,  with  awful 
blasphemy  upon  their  tongues.  Any  other  than  himself 
they  -would  have  hurled  down  and  torn  in  pieces,  as 
hounds  tear  offal. 

He  laughed  aloud  ;  with  haughty  defiance  flashing  on 
them  from  his  eyes. 

"Give  him  to  you?  You  think  I  am  a  huntsman,  to 
fling  the  fox  to  the  pack?  Off,  you  scoundrels! — sheathe 
your  knives,  I  tell  you;  do  you  hear?  You  want  my 
life  ? — I  dare  say !  You  are  murderers,  and  that  is  your 
trade.  But  I  do  not  mean  to  die  in  your  hell :  I  should 
find  no  worse  where  devils  rage,  if  the  priests'  tales  be 
ever  so  true.  This  man  shall  be  mine.  I  say  it.  You 
know  I  never  break  my  word." 

The  tumult  raged  higher  and  higher,  swelling  out  like 
the  hoarse  roar  of  the  sea. 

"Give  him  to  us!"  they  screamed.  "The  fires  shall 
have  him,  and  not  you  !" 

He  stood  unmoved ;  a  brawny  giant  flung  himself 
across  the  flames,  leaped  up  by  the  stone  ledges,  and 
made  a  lunge  at  the  body  of  the  spy.  But  Tricotrin  was 
too  rapid  for  him  ;  he  dealt  the  brigand  one  blow,  straight 
in  his  chest,  and  the  man  fell  like  an  ox  under  the  pole-axe. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         41 1 

There  was  a  moment's  pause  of  stupefaction  ;  they 
were  superstitious  of  his  power,  they  endowed  him  with 
rnor.0  than  mortal  force.  But  the  women,  ever  foremost 
in  cruelty  and  riot,  ever  hounding-  on  to  war  the  men  who 
might  choose  peace,  mocked  and  mouthed  at  their  males 
for  cowardice,  and  yelled  with  shrillest  oaths  their  hor- 
rible cry. 

"  Give  him  to  the  flames  !     His  blood  or  yours !" 

He  looked  with  changeless  calm  upon  them  still;  the 
hot  llickcring  glare  of  the  fire  lighting  up  the  majestic 
height  of  his  stature,  and  the  dauntless,  scornful  grandeur 
of  his  face,  on  which  there  stole  a  certain  wistful  saddened 
pity. 

He  had  thought  that  these  brutes  loved  him. 

"Poor  mad  wild  beasts!"  lie  murmured.  "You  know 
not  what  it  is  you  do.  Von  can  kill  me.  doubtless,  if  you 
will;  hut  you  cannot  make  me  look  on  to  .-re  you  steep 
yourselves  in  slaughter." 

The  roar  hushed,  like  the  roar  of  sea  waves  sinking 
down  into  calm:  silence  fell  on  them  with  a,  great  and 
sudden  awe.  A  sublimity  that  their  minds  coruld  not 
reach  stirred  their  souls  from  this  serene  courage,  this 
offered  sacrifice,  this  refusal  to  forsake  them,  though  they 
forsook  themselves.  A  gaunt,  bull-throated,  sanguinary, 
brutal  brigand, — type  of  the  populares  of  all  time,  from 
the  mobs  of  Marius  to  the  mobs  of  Marat, — thrust  his 
knife  down  into  his  girdle  with  a,  curse. 

"  Let  him  have  his  way  !  lie  may  thrust  a  pike  through 
me  and  I  will  not  say  him  no." 

There  \\;i-  a  throb  of  human  blood  under  the  bullock 
hide,  there  was  a  pulse  of  manly  softness  under  the  wolf 
skin.  He  was  ;i  butcher  of  men  :  he  had  drawn  his  knife 
across  more  than  one  panting  throat;  he  lived  by  riot, 
and  pillage;  bu1  hi-  temper  answered  to  courage,  and  he 
had  an  instincl  that  reverenced  greatness. 

Hi'  was  the  leader  anion--  them,  whose  word  was  law. 
and  whose  argumenl  with  rebels  was  a  rope:  the  crowd 
dared  no1  revolt  by  more  than  a  sullen  savage  groan. 
Tricotrin  flung  his  bright  glance  over  them. 

"Patron  Mj-Minoux,  thai  was  generously  spoken.  You 
give  me  this  man  ?" 


412  TRICOTRIN, 

A  roar  of  baffled  rage  broke  from  the  throng,  in  which 
the  loudest  voices  that  led  were  the  voices  of  women. 
But  Mi-Minoux  stayed  it  with  a  gesture. 

"A  thousand  devils  seize  you  !  He  deserves  more  than 
this  from  us,"  he  shouted.  "  Tricotrin— take  the  damned 
beast's  life  ;  for  your  sake  I  say,  not  his,  the  hound!" 

"  For  mine — and  for  your  own." 

He  stretched  out  his  hand  to  Mi-Minoux;  the  soilless 
hand  that  had  never  been  stained  with  bribe  or  blood,  or 
even  the  insincerity  of  a  false  greeting,  meeting  the  one 
that  was  black  with  a  thousand  crimes,  and  red  from 
murder's  work.  Over  the  Patron's  dusky  brutal  face  a 
tremor  and  a  light  passed  quickly ;  he  drew  his  own  hand 
away  as  though  it  were  burnt  with  fire. 

"Hell  and  fury !     Mine  is  not  fit !" 

Tricotrin  looked  on  him  with  the  smile  that  had  such 
infinite  pity. 

"  Chut !     Why  not  ?     We  are  both  men  1" 

Then,  standing  still  on  the  stone  ledge,  with  the  droop- 
ing, huddled  figure  of  the  spy  lying  in  a  shapeless  mass 
at  his  feet,  while  the  bonfire  burned  dully  in  the  rushing 
hail,  while  the  flames  and  the  wind  sank  together,  and 
the  people  grew  very  quiet,  hushing  the  children  who 
cried  aloud  for  the  spectacle  they  had  lost,  his  voice  rang, 
clear  and  sweet  as  a  bell,  through  the  thieves'  quarter, — 

"  Children  1  You  give  me,  to-night,  gifts  more  precious 
than  silver  and  gold.  I  thank  you  from  my  soul.  I 
would  not  barter  this  single  life  that  you  spare  to  me — 
vile  though  it  be— for  all  the  coins  of  monarchs'  treasuries. 
You  were  wild  beasts  when  I  found  you.  Nay !  a  mil- 
lionfold  worse.  For  the  beasts  do  but  slaughter  for 
hunger,  as  we  kill  the  calf  and  the  lamb ;  and  the  beasts 
never  slay  their  own  kind.  You  were  worse  than  the 
tigers  are;  but  still— my  tigers  were  human.  They  let 
go  their  prey  out  of  love  for  me.  Ah  !  Why  will  ye  not 
have  as  much  love  for  yourselves  ?  You  are  fools,  though 
}rou  deem  yourselves  wise :  fools  in  the  election  of  Crime 
for  your  god.  Does  that  god  bring  you  aught  but  blows  ? 
Will  he  feed  you  with  aught  but  ashes  ?  Will  he  clothe 
you  with  aught  but  fear,  and  shame,  and  fever,  and  fire  ? 
Ye  are  fools  in  the  god  that  ye  serve.     Ye  are  slaves, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         413 

though  ye  deem  yourselves  free.  What  life  does  your 
deity  give  ?  To  fear  like  wolves  ;  to  burrow  like  moles  ; 
to  be  hunted  like  foxes ;  to  be  shunned  like  lepers ;  to  en- 
dure months  of  famine  for  sake  of  one  hour's  gorged  and 
loathsome  debauch,  like  the  vultures  that  only  find  sweet- 
ness in  carrion.  To  be  netted  at  last  like  a  fox  in  a  gin; 
to  have  your  limbs  cramped  in  irons ;  to  be  fettered, 
scourged,  shaven,  yoked  together  like  coupled  hounds ; 
working  like  the  mill-horses  for  no  reward  in  one  endless 
circle  ;  sleeping  on  a  plank,  growing  old  in  a  cell,  without 
the  chance  of  a  hope,  without  a  woman's  kiss,  or  a  man's 
laugh,  without  a  draught  of  wine,  or  an  hour  of  liberty: — 
that  is  the  life  your  god  gives  you  1  That  is  the  fate  you 
deem  freedom  !  How  long  will  you  worship  so  blindly  ? — 
so  long  as  you  are  born  in  darkness  ;  so  long  as  you  are 
begotten  and  bred  and  reared  In  ignorance  and  iniquity. 
You  lay  your  children,  new-born,  in  the  red  iron  hands  of 
your  Moloch.  You  fill  their  mouths  with  curses  ere  yet 
their  milk-teeth  are  shed.  You  snatch  them  from  their 
mothers  to  send  them  out  to  your  god's  hideous  service. 
You  give  them  life,  only  that  you  may  cause  to  be  brought 
forth  fresh  spawn  of  sin  to  curse  the  world  that  yon  hate. 
You  bring  the  young  children  your  women  have  borne 
to  see  a  man  burn  for  their  sport :  if  they  kill  you  when 
you  are  old  and  useless,  and  cumber  their  path,  will  it  be 
the  children's  fault  or  your  own  ?  Slaves  yourselves, 
Why  will  you  bring  the  new  lives  into  bondage  ere  yel 
they  can  tell  what  the  liberty  of  innocence  means? 
Pooled  Berfs  of  a  false  god,  w  horn  you  worship  because 
his  altars  glitter  with  the  tinsel  of  vice,  why  will  ye  hind 
your  offspring  down  beneath  the  tyranny  of  your  vile 
religion?  Fou  think  I  use;  language  too  harsh  ?  Oh,  my 
people  !  You  would  have  taken  my  life  a  moment  since 
because  I  would  not  stand  by  to  see  you  steeped  afresh 
[n  blood;  will  you  never  believe  how  gladly  1  would  lay 
it  down  for  you  if  it  would  ransom  you  from  suffering 
and  s;n  ?" 

They  were  silent  as  they  heard. 

The   passionate  eloquence  of  the   poet,  winged  with 
living  truth,  pierced   their  bouIs  as   be  spoke  to  them. 

35* 


414  TRICOTRIN, 

Vaguely  the  meaning  and  the  greatness  of  his  words 
reached  the  dullest  and  Vilest  life  that,  cowered  there. 
Women,  sexless  and  shameful,  shuddered  and  beat  their 
breasts  that  had  nourished  thieves,  and  cursed  aloud 
their  kisses  that  had  rewarded  murderers  with  kisses  sold 
for  stolen  gold.  Men,  dogged  and  brutal,  dropped  down 
their  heads,  and  shivered  where  they  stood,  and  wondered 
in  their  poor  untutored  brains,  that  struggled  against 
such  mists  of  poisoned  ignorance,  whether  indeed  he 
who  arraigned  them  thus  were  man  or  god. 

It  was  only  the  little  children  who  crouched  beneath 
the  flame  pillars  of  the  fire,  who  murmured  in  their  baby- 
throats  against  him,  because  he  had  cheated  them  of  the 
burning,  and  had  not  left  them  hear  the  music  of  the 
death-sbriek. 

He  heard,  and  stooped,  and  raised  up  one  of  those  who 
muttered  in  lisping  revolt  against  him.  The  child  was  only 
a  few  years  old ;  but  from  out  its  elfin  eyes  the  thirst  of 
inherited  lust  already  glistened,  and  on  its  parching 
mouth  the  heat  of  the  drunkard's  desire  was  already  set. 

"Lookl"  he  said  to  the  silent  people,  while  his  eyes 
rested  on  them  with  a  regard  of  tenderness  and  of  compas- 
sion unutterable.  "  The  child  hungers  for  the  sight  of  a 
death  agony :  your  blood  is  in  bis  veins,  and  he  can  have 
no  choice  but  to  be  vile,  for  have  you  not  made  his  pastime 
murder,  and  his  cradle-song  a  curse  ?  You  have  created 
him  only  to  slay  him, — are  not  the  beasts  of  the  desert 
holy  and  full  of  mercy  beside  you  ?  Women — as  these 
creatures  come  to  the  birth,  it  were  better  to  tear  them 
from  your  breasts,  and  dash  their  brains  out  upon  the 
stones  of  your  streets,  than  have  them  become  like  this. 
He  is  not  a  child — this  thing  that  clamors  to  see  a  living 
creature  burn.  He  is  a  budding  seed  of  awful  crime,  to 
which  your  passions  had  dared  to  give  the  breath  and 
force  of  life.  And  through  him  your  sin  will  pass  down 
through  generation  after  generation.  Have  you  ever 
thought  what  it  is  that  you  do  when  you  beget  these  lives 
that  grow  up,  like  rank  grass,  from  corruption  ?" 

The  great  multitude  was  silent :  even  the  hellish  creat- 
ure that  had  mouthed  and  mocked  at  his  feet,  was  quiet 
and  touched  with  awe,  not  knowing  the  meaning  of  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         415 

words,  but  moved,  unwittingly,  by  the  solemn  and  dread 
sweetness  of  the  voice  above  him. 

Through  the  mob  of  murderers,  and  ravishers,  and 
thieves,  and  forgers,  a  shiver  ran  like  one  deep  sob. 

Without  another  word  he  went  down  from  the  stones 
where  he  stood,  and  passed  away  through  their  midst, 
leading  the  condemned  with  him. 


CHAPTER  XLI. 


Curysostom,  when  he  protected  Eutropius  under  the 
shield  of  his  eloquence,  could  not  have  had  more  disgust 
for  the  vjleness  of  the  one  he  had  saved  than  had  he  now 
for  the  spy  that  he  had  rescued  from  the  fire.  Without 
asking  he  guessed  his  guilt ;  the  guilt  of  a  criminal  turned 
informer,  and  chastised  by  those  he  had  endeavored  to 
betray. 

At  him,  he  had  not  even  glanced;  and  the  unhappy 
creature  had  not  once  lifti  d  his  aching  lids,  but  moved  on 
with  trembling  steps  through  the  furious  driving  of  the 
sleet  and  wind. 

When  at  length  they  had  reached  a  solitary  place  where 
none  were  in  hearing,  his  protector  loosened  him,  and 
faced  him. 

"  If  Iscariot  had  lived,  he  might  have  redeemed  his 
crime.  There  is  no  sin  that  shuts  oul  hope.  What  are 
you?  and  how  came  yon  there?  It  may  be  1  can  aid 
you." 

Th  traitor  he  had  rescued  looked  up  at  him  with  blank 
scorched  eyes,  that  still  saw  nothing  save  the  glare  and 
ebb  of  the  flames  from  which  he  had  escaped. 

Tricotrin  scanned  hi.- face;  ami  his  own  changed.  He 
Stood  motiotdess,  looking  on  the  charred,  shrinking,  half- 
naked  form  l"  im. 

"Again  1"  he  murmured.     "  A.gain  I" 

The  other  did  not  hear  or  note  him  ;  feeling,  beholding, 


416  TRICOTRIN, 

listening  to  naught  save  that  roar  and  leap  of  the  bonfires 
which  seemed  still  winding  around  his  limbs,  and  crush- 
ing his  breath  with  their  clouds  of  smoke.  Of  his*  rescue 
he  was  scarcely  conscious  ;  he  had  followed  the  hand  that 
had  guided  him,  by  a  dumb  instinct :  he  was  senseless 
and  paralyzed  with  the  past  fear ;  he  was  like  a  moth 
caught  by  some  gentle  hand  from  out  a  flame,  and  loosed, 
maimed  and  blinded,  upon  the  darkness  and  coldness  of 
the  night. 

"Again !"  murmured  Tricotrin  ;  "  how  vile  we  are  at  our 
best !    If  I  had  known  I  might  have  left  him  to  his  fate  !" 

All  the  light,  and  the  pity,  and  the  sublimity  that  had 
been  upon  his  face  when  he  had  addressed  the  multitudes, 
and  driven  them  back  from  slaughter,  had  faded ;  it  was 
dark,  and  gray,  and  weary,  the  fatigue  of  rising  passions, 
and  the  despair  of  a  soul  that  could  not  reach  the  heights 
it  strove  for,  following  the  inspiration  and  the  tenderness 
and  the  strength  that  had  been  on  it  as  he  had  arraigned 
the  murderers. 

He  uttered  not  one  word,  but  stood  gazing  down  upon 
the  blackened,  quivering,  helpless  thing,  whose  life  would 
have  gone  forth  in  fire  but  for  him. 

They  were  alone  :  dark  leaning  roofs  of  empty  buildings 
rose  upon  either  side,  like  the  steep  slopes  of  caving  cliffs ; 
the  winds  shrieked  through  the  narrow  passages  ;  the  sky 
above  was  leaden  and  starless.  The  creature,  looking 
upward, — with  his  sight  still  dazzled,  and  hot  as  with  the 
horrible  scorch  of  the  flame  upon  it,  and  with  his  brain 
still  maddened  from  terroi', — caught  the  eyes  that  rested 
on  him,  and  knew  them,  and  trembled,  and  covered  his 
face  with  his  bruised,  bleeding  hands,  and  cried  out  that 
the  dead  had  arisen. 

Above  him,  like  the  Saint  Michael  of  Guido,  stood  the 
form  of  his  savior ;  the  shadows  changing  on  his  face, 
fiery,  fleeting,  lightened,  darkened,  swift  and  varying  as 
the  thoughts  at  conflict  in  his  heart. 

On  the  earth,  the  Greek,  Canaris,  writhed  senseless ; 
Shuddering  in  epilepsy,  foaming  at  the  mouth,  beating  the 
air  with  frantic  gesture,  struck  down,  as  by  a  stroke  from 
some  avenging  angel,  by  the  gaze  that  had  looked  at  him 
with  the  look  of  the  dead. 


THE  STORY    OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         41? 

The  night  had  grown  still  more  inclement.  The  pat- 
tering hail  had  changed  to  a  storm  of  rain,  whose  gnat 
drops  froze  as  swiftly  as  they  fell.  The  air  was  ice  ;  the 
winds  were  hurricanes  ;  the  cold  was  growing  with  every 
instant  more  intense.  Left  upon  the  frozen  ground,  half 
nude,  convulsed,  insensible,  the  wretched  creature  lying 
there  must  have  perished  no  less  surely  than  had  the 
Haines  consumed  him. 

He  was  beyond  the  pale  of  human  kinship,  beyond  the 
right  of  human  pity, — a  traitor  who  had  turned  against 
his  comrades,  and  striven  to  betray  them  to  the  law,  so 
that  his  own  wretched  life  should  be,  by  the  law,  set  free. 

To  the  man  who  looked  on  him,  he  was  yet  more  than 
this;  he  was  a  foe  whose  poisoned  fangs  had  bitten  deep 
into  the  frank,  free  faith  of  boyhood. 

Yet,  with  the  same  mercy  as  lie  would  have  raised  a 
dying,  leprous-eaten  wretch,  Tricot rin  lifted  up  the  crimi- 
nal from  the  earth,  and  passed  onward. 

"Doing  otherwise — how  were  I  better  than  they?"  he 
thought. 

Prom  the  active  deed  of  murder  he  had  that  hour  with- 
held the  people.  It  was  not  for  him,  whose  lips  had 
spoken  t  heir  rebuke,  to  yield  himself  up  to  the  inst  incts  of 
their  vengeance.  He  went  on  1  lirough  the  ice-storm,  over 
the  whitened,  frozen  ground,  heavily  cumbered  with  the 
convulsed  limbs  and  twisting  body  of  the  unconscious 
burden  that  he  carried. 

Once,  ere  this,  he  had  given  this  man  the  "  chance"  that 
he  had  coveted;  and  out  of  that  chance  he  found  to-night 
that  the  lost  wretch  had  coined  only  deeper  crime,  viler 
ruin,  lower  degradation.  Yet.  he  gave  him  still  another. 
The  baser,  the  weaker,  the  guiltier  this  life,  the  more  need 
was  there  that  it  should  have  breath  and  space  left  to 
change  and  become  cleansed  if  such  amend  were  possible. 

There  was  oothing  stirring  in  the  howling  winter  night 
thai  already  trenched  on  dawn :  he  me1  aone  to  aid  him 
in  his  errand;  the  only  sound  was  the  steps  of  the  half- 
frozen  patrol  some  way  from  him,  and  the  soldier  be  could 
not  summon.  To  give  up  this  thing,  that  lay  insensible 
and  rigid  across  his  shoulder,  to  the  hands  of  the  law  was 
not  the  reading  of  duty  that  he  followed. 


418  TRICOTRIN, 

Painfully,  and  by  slow  degrees,  he  toiled  on  through 
the  beating  storm  that  turned  to  ice  as  it  fell  upon  his 
face  and  form.  At  length  he  reached  the  gaunt  walls  of 
the  nearest  hospital,  with  its  lamp  burning  over  the  en- 
trance-way, the  flame  dashed  to  and  fro  by  the  fierce 
eddies  of  the  gusts  that  shook  its  iron  cage  and  blew  the 
ice  rain  past  it  in  white  clouds. 

Jle  knew  the  religious  refuge  well :  as  one  of  those  few 
places  upon  earth  where  to  suffer  is  deemed  sufficient 
passport  into  pity,  and  where  no  other  title  of  admission 
is  required  than  the  canker  of  disease  and  the  woes  of 
necessity. 

He  rang ;  the  great  bell  boomed  mournfully  through 
the  stillness.  He  leaned  the  figure  of  the  man  against 
the  porch,  and  gazed  on  it  with  an  intinite  pain  in  his 
eyes.  It  was  huddled  together,  sunk  in  the  swoon  that 
had  succeeded  the  convulsion,  helpless,  pitiful,  miserable 
bevond  all  words. 

"  Had  you  been  true  in  the  j^ears  of  our  youth,  how 
would  it  have  been  with  us  both  now?"  he  thought; — 
and  all  the  strange,  wild,  cruel  dreams,  which  rise  with 
the  memory  of  a  fate  that  has  been  within  our  grasp,  and 
has  been  seized  from  it,  and  broken  asunder,  and  cast  into 
the  abyss  of  irrevocable  losses,  arose  before  him  as  he 
stood  outside  the  walls  of  the  hospital  with  the  senseless 
body  stretched  in  the  gray  shadow  at  his  feet. 

The  boom  of  the  bell  died  on  the  silence.  The  iron 
dour  slowly  unclosed.  He  was  familiar  there;  and  the 
Brethren  were  wont  to  call  him,  in  the  bitterness  of  win- 
ters such  as  this,  their  Alpine  dog,  their  St.  Bernard  of 
search  and  of  succor. 

"I  brought  him  from  the  thieves'  quarter.  He  is  not 
dead,"  he  said,  briefly. 

They  took  the  ghastly  burden  within,  to  where  were 
warmth,  and  science,  and  care,  and  rest;  and  he  turned  and 
went  backward  into  the  storm,  refusing  to  enter  there. 

He  was  not  conscious  of  the  violence  of  the  winds,  or 
of  the  perilous  ice-blasts  of  the  rain.  His  memory  was 
with  the  past;  he  wondered  how  it  would  have  been  with 
him  had  one  lie  from  the  lips  of  that  dying  wretch  not 
changed  the  current  of  his  life  in  boyhood — one  act  of 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND    STRAY.         4  ]  9 

baseness  from  the  traitor,  who  had  come  at  lasl  to  the 
burning  play  of  the  thieves'  awful  mirth,  not  driven  him 
in  youth  to  exile. 

Greatness,  and  power,  and  the  treasuries  of  wealth, 
would  have  been  his.  The  laurels  of  fame  would  have 
filled  his  hands  in  lieu  of  the  wild  flowers  of  gipsy  wan- 
dering. His  pleasures  would  have  been  taken  in  palaces 
instead  of  under  the  tawny  roofs  of  fishers'-cabins,  of  vil- 
lage-hostelries,  of  painters'  sketching-tents.  His  wine 
would  have  been  poured  from  chalices  of  gold  or  silver  in 
place  of  the  drinking-horns  of  careless  artists,  and  the 
brown  jugs  of  bright-eved  maidens.  His  name  would 
have  been  on  the  lips  of  the  world  instead  of  in  the  hearts 
of  the  people;  and  honor  would  have  blown  loud  clarions 
in  his  path  where  love  now  laugned  in  his  eyes  and  song 
now  rang  on  his  car. 

Regret  had  never  touched  him. 

Those  heights  which  he  had  left,  had  ever  looked  to  the 
gaze  thai  was  hoid  and  true  as  the  eagle's,  only  as  the 
sand  mounds  which  the  children  of  the  \\  orld  held  in  their 
ignorance  to  be  golden  thrones. 

The  diadem  which  he  had  laid  down  had  ever  seemed 
to  the  forehead  that  was  warm  with  the  suns  of  the  south, 
and  proud  with  an  unstained  truth,  and  caressed  with  the 
Bweel  lips  of  women,  but  a  leaden  fardel  of  weary  weight, 
that  men  only  bare  because  fools  called  it  a  crown. 

The  ambitions  thai  he  had  forsaken  had  ever  appeared 
to  the  mind  that  was  steeped  in  the  colors  of  the  poet,  in 
the  passions  of  the  lover,  in  the  indolence  of  the  wanderer, 
in  the  gayety  of  the  reveler,  but  as  ropes  of  sand,  whereby 
those  who  deemed  that  they  climbed  to  the  stars  fell  back 
into  the  pit  of  oblivion. 

lie  would  not  have  exchanged  his  life  for  a  kingdom; 
and  envy  of  those  whom  men  called  greal  had  never  left 
its  evil  breath  upon  him.      lie  knew  too  well  the  penalties 

thai    ke   the   air   in  which    such    men   soar  so  arid,  ami 

drench  so  weightily  with  the  dank  dews  of  satiety  the 
wings  of  all  those  who  fly  on  high. 
■.■•ret   had  never  touched  him. 

Never — until  this  nighl  when  he  had  beheld  the  violets 
he  had  given  in  the  while  breast  of  a  woman. 


420  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  XLII. 

Lost  in  deep  thought  he  noted  nothing  as  he  moved 
homeward  from  the  hospital,  until  in  one  of  the  lonelier 
passages  his  eyes  were  drawn  to  a  dark  strange  figure 
coming  through  the  drifting  snow,  that  froze  as  fast  as  it 
fell;  wandering  with  a  dreamy  uncertainty  in  the  gait, 
yet  advancing  with  a  curious  resolve  and  swiftness.  The 
man  was  dressed  in  heavy  blue  fisher's  clothes,  his  beard 
was  very  long  and  rough,  and  blew  in  the  strong  wind, 
his  eyes  gazed  out  into  the  darkness,  painfully  bright  and 
yet  unutterably  weary. 

Tricotrin  had  seen  that  same  form  oftentimes  since  he 
had  seen  it  first  under  the  tawny  sail  of  the  Loirais  hay- 
boat.  In  dark,  quaint,  old-world  nooks  of  man-forgotten 
towns ;  in  the  hot  yellow  glare  of  southern  cities  at  noon ; 
on  the  olive-shadowed  roads  of  the  Riviera ;  in  the  great 
brown  cumbrous  barges,  ou  rivers  crowded  with  summer- 
soil  ;  in  the  deep  glow  of  cool,  dim,  silent  churches  with 
the  amber  shadows  and  the  yellow  lights  sleeping  on 
their  noiseless  footways :  seen  it  ever  in  the  same  wan- 
dering quest,  ever  in  the  same  mute  solitude. 

His  voice  rang  through  the  frosty  air:  "Bruno  ?" 

The  sailor  paused,  and  looked  around,  with  a  vague 
memory  in  his  eyes :  in  a  certain  sense  he  had  grown  to 
recognize  that  voice  better  than  any  other's,  though  he 
would  glide  away  from  all  companionship,  and  suffer  no 
pursuit  He  knew  it,  something  as  the  dog,  whose  heart 
is  in  his  own  dead  master's  grave,  will  know  a  voice  that 
ever  speaks  tenderly  to  him,  and  never  seeks  to  draw  him 
away  from  the  tomb. 

Tricotrin  laid  one  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"  You  have  not  found  her  ?"  he  had  learned  that  it  was 
more  merciful  to  treat  the  delusion  as  a  truth. 

The  sailor's  eyes  turned  on  him  with  a  look  as  bewil- 
dered and  as  utterly  heart-broken  as  the  eyes  of  the  dog 
at  the  grave  of  his  master. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         42j 

"  Not  yet.     It  is  long- ; — it  is  long  !" 

A  great  sigh  shook  him  as  he  spoke.  It  was  long ; — 
it  was  over  twenty  years. 

"The  years  pass  swiftly,"  Tricotrin  answered  him  with 
the  grave  gentleness  which  had  won  him  something  like 
trust  and  love  even  from  this  poor,  hunted,  stupefied 
mind.  "  The  years  bring  us  age.  May  it  not  be  she  is 
dead?" 

"No.  That  is  not  possible.  If  she  were  dead  her 
soul  would  come  to  me." 

Bruno's  eyes  were  bright  with  this  strange  faith  which 
lived  in  him  and  could  not  be  stirred;  this  faith  which 
was  the  tempest-tossed  relic  of  that  barbaric  creed  of  his 
childhood,  which  drew  his  tired  steps  to  the  altars  of  the 
churches  in  a  vague  worship,  half  superstition,  half  heart- 
sickness. 

Tricotrin  looked  on  him  in  silence  ;  what  words  would 
allay  this  hopeless  grief,  or  dull  this  endless  loss  ?  Her 
soul  ! — the  soul  of  that  soulless  thing  who  had  hut  senses 
and  passions,  and  who  had  no  god  but  the  gods  of  gold 
and  of  lust! 

"  I  thought  I  saw  her — look  you!"  whispered  Bruno, 
suddenly,  while  bis  voice  sank  very  low.  "Last  night, 
— a  \'v\\  hours  agone, — I  came  on  a  place  where  the  men 
and  the  women  dance  on  the  ice,  and  the  torches  burn, 
and  the  sledge  bells  ring,  and  the  great  trees  are  all  alive 
with  tire  and  silver.  Yon  call  it  the  wood  of  Boulogne? 
Well, — I  thought  that  I  saw  her.  Through  a  casement, 
in  i  hat  wooden  house  on  the  lake,  where  the  lights  glitter 
all  night,  where  the  devil  .-its  laughing  to  .-oc  men  do  his 
work.  It  was  her  face  ! — it  was  among  many  ;  they  were 
shouting,  ami  singing,  ami  pouring  red  wine  down  their 
throats,  and  the  face  turned  and  looked  at  me  with  her 
eyes — oh,  yes! — with  her  eyes.  Bu1  do  you  know-  what 
looked  through  them? — adevil.     Through  her  eyes  he 

jibed  me,  and  mocked  me,  and  vaunted  his  vice  and  his 
lusts.  Then  I  knew  that  Satanus  had  bade  him  take  her 
likeness  to  tempi  ami  to  torture  me.  And  I  had  strength 
to  Hcc;  I  (led  all  night  through  the  woods,  through  the 
darkness,  through  the  ice  ami  the  snow.     Will  it  he  so 

36 


422  TRICOTRJN, 

in  hell  ?     Will  they  curse  us  by  putting  their  vileness  in 
the  shapes  we  know  purest  and  loveliest?" 

He  paused  abruptly ;  the  man  who  heard  him  stood 
silent,  touched  with  a  pity  beyond  all  words. 

The  devil  the  forsaken  husband  had  beheld  had  been 
the  woman  whom  he  believed  pure  and  unsoiled  as  the 
snow  that  fell  round  them  ! 

"  Come  with  me,  Bruno,"  he  said  softly.  "  Come  with 
me  if  for  to-night  only;  you  are  cold,  and  fevered,  and 
worn  out ;  you  are  ill,  though  you  know  it  not.    Come  !" 

The  sailor  shook  his  head;  with  the  dogged  dreamy 
resolve  settling  over  his  gaze. 

"  I  am  not  ill.     And  I  must  seek  her." 

"  But  you  have  sought  her  so  long  ?" 

"  Yes.  It  is  long — how  long  !  I  cannot  count.  But 
that  is  no  matter,  you  know ;  when  I  find  her  we  shall 
forget  that.  I  must  not  rest.  I  would  not  sleep ;  but 
that  sleep  comes  on  me  at  last  and  kills  me,  body  and 
brain.  I  never  sleep  but  just  at  the  dawn.  I  cannot  tell 
why,  but  I  feel  she  is  in  less  peril  when  the  sun  first 
breaks.  All  things  are  waking,  and  they  are  merciful, — 
the  beasts  and  the  birds.  There  is  mercy  in  their  eyes 
that  no  men  have, — but  you ;  and  they  suffer  :  that  makes 
them  pitiful!" 

He  paused  once  more ;  the  strange,  wild,  tender 
thoughts  straying  through  the  chaos  of  his  shattered 
reason. 

"  Come  !"  urged  Tricotrin  gently.  "  We  will  seek  her 
together  ?" 

But  Bruno  drew  away. 

"No — no — no,"  he  said  absently.  "  I  must  be  alone  ; 
always  alone.  You  see  ; — we  do  not  know  where  she  is  ; 
she  may  be  ill,  and  desolate,  or  a  beggar  mayhap ;  she 
must  be  like  a  stray  lamb  on  a  bleak  mountain  side,  alone, 
in  the  width  of  the  world.  And  you  know  the  lamb  will 
only  come  to  the  shepherd's  voice ;  another's  scares  her. 
And  something  tells  me  I  am  near  to  her  now :  the  end 
will  soon  come." 

There  was  a  light  like  the  pale  radiance  from  stars 
upon  his  brown  attenuated  features ;  but  the  stars  were 
not  shining,  the  sky  above-head  was  black  with  leaden 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND    STRAY.         423 

snow-burdened  clouds:  the  light  was  the  light  of  a  mar- 
tyr's hope  ;   holy,  pure,  divine. 

Ee  moved  swiftly  away,  with  a  backward  gesture  of 
the  hand,  mournful,  appealing,  commanding,  thai  entreated 
not  to  be  followed,  and  that  could  not  be  disobeyed.  His 
footsteps  fell  silent  on  the  softness  of  the  snow;  his  form 
glided  away  like  a  wraith,  soon  lost  in  the  hush  and  the 
gloom. 

Tricotrin  stood  long  and  looked  back  at  the  vault  of 
darkness  into  which  he  had  passed. 

"Twenty-four years  1"  bethought.  '-And  hehasnever 
weariedl     What  is  my  bitterness  beside  his?" 

Then  he  went  onward,  back  to  the  gayer  quarters  of 
the  town;  and,  as  be  went,  be  passed  the  open  portal-  of 
a  world-famous  theater.  The  flood  of  gaslight  streamed 
out  upon  the  dazzling  snow;  the  audience  poured  out 
with  it,  in  a  flood  of  glowing  color;  the  throng  was  lull 
of  laughter,  and  all  their  voices  were  singing  snatches  of 
a  new  mirthful  carol  of  Auber,  heard  within  that  nigbl 
I'm'  the  firsl  time,  and  bright;  as  the  wines  and  the  loves 
that  il  chanted. 

"How  she  sang,  how  .-he  acted,  how  she  danced!" 
shouted  a  .-indent.  "She  is  as  lovely  as  ever  she  was, — 
is  Coriolis  I" 


CHAPTER  XLIII. 

"  Love!  Love !  always  of  love  [—how  tired  I  am  of  it  I" 
she  thought,  casting  aside  the  latesl  of  the  many  letters 
that  vainly  wooed  to  new  nuptials  the  Duchess  de  Lira. 

A  poel  dying  in  a  garret,  a  revolutionist   pining  in  a 

dungeon,  a  man  heart-sick  with  foiled  ambition,  a  woi 
scourged  IV. mi  the  world'.-  pleasures  by  the  world's  oppro- 
brium, a  wile  with  no  sphere  save  the  narrow  space  thai 
ber  hearth-lire  lit— these  might  need  it, these mighl  glorify 
it.      Uui  she  ! — "What   had  she  |i»  do  with  this  comrade  of 
ars.  this  consoler  of  transgressors  ?    It  was  an  incense 


424  TRICOTRIN, 

that  perfumed  her  path,  a  wreath  that  her  foot  trod  in 
passing,  a  passion-flower  that  was  twisted  among  the  gold 
and  gems  of  her  diadem  : — no  more.  What  cause  had  she 
to  stoop  and  share  a  thing  so  common,  and  so  common- 
place, that  touched  the  lips  of  gipsy-girls,  and  smiled  from 
the  eyes  of  artists'  mistresses,  and  sang  its  songs  under 
cottage  eaves,  and  made  fair  the  dreams  of  toil-worn  peas- 
ants ?  This  tale  told  so  continuously  on  her  ear,  grew 
very  wearisome :  it  was  a  melodious  monotone,  but  its 
changeless  monotone  was  tiresome. 

Love  had  indeed  done  all  things  for  her.  It  had  been 
around  her  all  her  life :  her  servitor  who  ministered 
uncomplainingly  to  all  caprices,  her  treasure-house  from 
which  she  drew  what  she  would,  her  wishing-ring  where- 
by all  the  powers  and  joys  of  an  exceeding  greatness  had 
become  hers,  and  overborne  the  accident  that  had  cast 
her,  a  bastard  or  a  changeling,  upon  fate.  But  she  held 
it  in  gay,  languid,  light  contempt.  It  was  a  thing  so 
easily  won  with  a  careless  smile,  it  was  so  easy  to  retain 
by  an  indolent  word,  it  was  a  spaniel  so  fawning  and 
faithful  under  blows  as  under  caresses — in  fine,  it  was 
such  a  fool,  that  she  held  it  in  scorn,  like  all  things  cheaply 
purchased ;  and  although  it  was  her  one  great  creditor, 
without  which  she  had  been  bankrupt  and  a  prisoner  in 
the  jail  of  bitter  circumstance  and  hard  destitution,  she 
scarcely  gave  it  a  grateful  memory,  never  a  reverential 
thought. 

She  esteemed  it,  as  his  mistress, — beautiful,  callous,  ex- 
acting, avaricious,  contemptuous, — will  esteem  the  man 
who  gives  her  all  she  has,  and  is  content  with  all  her 
wayward  moods,  and  adores  her  so  blindly  that  he  never 
perceives  that  he  is  only  her  tool,  her  purse,  her  dupe  I 
To  need  love  one  must  need  sympathy.  Sympathy  was 
indifferent  to  her  :  she  was  perfectly  successful,  and  suc- 
cess is  sufficient  for  itself. 

The  lying  murmurs  of  the  slanderous  world  had  attrib- 
uted many  loves  to  this  woman,  so  magnificent,  so  young, 
so  seductive,  so  tempted,  so  negligent  of  her  lord,  and  so 
early  widowed.  But  that  world  was  at  fault  as  its  con- 
clusions most  often  are  :  she  had  never  loved.  She  only 
loved — herself:  and  so  fair  was  the  sovereign  whom  her 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         425 

mirrors  displayed  to  her  that  she  had  never  once  felt  in- 
clined to  change  the  allegiance.  In  one  sense,  indeed, 
she  had  loved  the  man  whom  she  had  voluntarily  for- 
saken :  loved  him  with  a  fondness  and  a  strength  she  had 
never  otherwise  known  ;  but  that  affection  had  never  been 
strong  enough  to  combat  the  sunny  selfishness  in  her  ; 
and  for  several  years  it  had  been  so  commingled  with  self- 
reproach,  distasteful  humiliation,  remorse,  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  ingratitude,  that  she  had  grown  to  thrust  it 
away  from  her  as  often  as  it  moved  her. 

She  was  dreamily  but  entirely  content  where  she  re- 
clined, with  the  fire  and  the  wax-light  playing  on  her: 
they  who  are  thus,  but  seldom  recur  to  the  past.  The 
fruit  we  have  eaten  is  only  sweet  in  its  recollection  when 
thai  which  our  hand  holds  is  bitter  and  rotten,  and  on  the 
boughs  of  our  orchard  there  is  no  blossom  that  promises 
fresh  wealth  for  the  spring. 

She  had  so  many  things  of  which  to  think.  Past  scenes 
of  triumph  in  gorgeous  old  palaces  of  Vienna  and  of 
Rome;  present  days  of  empire  in  this  peerless  Paris 
where  she  reigned.  Treasures  of  art,  and  of  beauty;  of 
the  looms  of  India  and  the  jewels  of  Asia;  of  painter  and 
poet  and  musician  ;  of  laud  and  water  and  eastle-erowned 
landscape,  that  were  all  inalienably  hers.  Caprices 
which,  if  she  had  them  to-night,  would  become  the  fashion 
to-morrow.  Ambitions  for  rule,  for  dominance,  for  the 
celebrity  of  the  State  as  well  as  of  the  salon,  which  were 
sufficient  to  give  zest  and  pleasure  to  the  passing  of  life 
With  the  aroma  of  someone  thing  attainable  though  as 
yet  unattained;  All  these  floated  in  gorgeous  hues 
through  her  thoughts;  as,  when  she  had  been  a  child, 
had  done  the  tales  of  the  fairies  when  she  had  watched  a 
(lock  of  blue-warblers  flash  in  azure  through  the  sunshine. 

She  had  youth,  she  had  wealth,  she  had  power,  and 
dominion,   and    freedom,    and   BUCCeBS:    what    room    could 

there  be  for  remembrance  of  a  long-buried  time  when  she 
had  been  nameless,  and  homeless,  and  motherless,  and 

friendless   also,  save  for  otic  friend  who  never  begrudged, 
ne\  er  reproached,  never  wearied. 

Once,  in  the  allurement   that   the  actress  possessed  for 

3G* 


426  TRICOTRIN, 

her,  he  had  dreaded  for  her  with  a  terrible  fear  the  life  of 
temptation,  of  seduction,  of  diamond-crowned  evil,  of 
those  women  whose  loveliness  is  as  the  curling  snake 
which  clings  but  to  destroy,  and  whose  sweetness  is  as 
the  poisoned  honey  culled  from  the  brilliancy  of  African 
flowers.  If  she  had  gone  to  it; — gone  through  its  glit- 
tering portals  to  its  bitter  end,  and  known  shame  and 
starvation,  and  the  painted  misery  thatshriuks  even  from 
the  pitiful  eyes  of  the  street-dog ; — she  would  have  re- 
membered better  far,  and  the  days  of  her  childhood  would 
have  been  to  her  even  as  a  paradise  whose  closed  gates 
were  guarded  by  a  flaming  sword,  and  whose  light  would 
have  looked  as  the  light  of  eternal  suns  that  could  never 
again  stream  on  her.  In  her  wretchedness  and  desolation  he 
would  have  been  remembered  and  avenged, — in  her  joy 
he  had  no  place. 

Beside  these  letters  of  the  passion  which  she  mocked, 
she  had  much  correspondence  to  glance  through  where 
she  sat  in  her  dressing-chamber  resting  for  a  half  hour, 
ere  she  should  attire  herself  for  a  costume-ball  at  one  of 
the  embassies  : — from  the  last  of  such  entertainments  she 
had  been  summoned  to  find  a  husband  lying  dead  in  his 
great  Roman  palace  whose  latest  word  had  been,  "  do  not 
spoil  her  pleasure." 

But  of  this  she  did  not  think. 

One  letter  she  perused  a  little  more  earnestly  than  she 
did  those  of  honeyed  flattery,  or  eager  worship ;  it  was  from 
ber  steward  at  her  chateau  in  the  south.  It  was  full  of 
humble  apology  and  regret  at  having  been  unable  to 
execute  her  most  august  commands. 

"  Unable  to  make  my  theater  in  the  south  court !"  she 
murmured  aloud,  as  she  read.  "  Intolerable  !"  If  he 
cannot  obey  me  in  the  possible,  and  the  impossible,  I  will 
displace  him  with  some  one  who  will." 

A  line  farther  down  caught  her  sight:  she  saw  that  the 
command  he  herein  referred  to  was  touching-,  not  the 
new  theater  fur  her  autumnal  gathering,  but  the  old 
truffle-hunter,  Aubin  Ralcor.  The  steward  wrote  that 
he  had  been  found  dead  on  his  bed  of  leaves  that  morn- 
ing ;  the  steward  regretted  that  death  should  have  been 
so   discourteous   as  to  precede   and  prevent   madame's 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         42T 

wishes  :  but  death  was  such  a  democrat — it  would  not  even 
respect  madame's  orders.  The  steward  proceeded  to  say 
that  the  theater  in  the  south  court  should  assuredly  he 
ready  in  the  autumn,  as  madame  desired:  death  could 
not  interfere  in  this  case,  for  if  it  carried  off  a  workman, 
he  would  with  ease  be  supplied: — Providence  was  boun- 
tiful and  made  laborers  invariably  in  excess  of  work. 

"  Poor  old  man, — it  is  a  pity!"  she  thought.  "  But  I 
am  glad  the  theater  is  sure  to  be  ready, — there  are  glass- 
houses by  millions,  but  no  one  has  had  a  glass  theater. 
It  will  illuminate  so  well,  and  sparkle  all  over  like  a  crys- 
tal." 

She  cast  his  letter  after  the  others,  and  went  to  the 
appareling  of  her  charms,  on  which  she  expended  so 
many  hours  of  her  time,  so  many  seasons  of  her  medita- 
tion, in  the  same  pleasure  with  which  she  had  gazed  at 
the  necklet  of  the  Prince  Faineanl  when  all  the  little, 
chirping,  waking  birds  beneath  the  caves  had  seemed  to 
tell  her  there  was  naught  so  fair  as  she  on  earth. 

Princes  and  nobles  told  her  that  sweet  story  now:  but 
it  had  lost  little  of  the  charm  it  had  possessed  in  the 
swallows'  first  telling. 

She  was  neither  ignorant  nor  of  slight  intellect,  as 
mosl  Vain  women  are;  she  had  alike  intelligence  and  wit 
of  an  unusual  keenness,  but  she  was  for  all  that  the  vain- 
est of  all  living  things.  She  adored  herself;  she  delighted 
in  that  exquisite  lac  of  hers  to  which  she  owed  all  her 
captivity  of  the  world  ;  she  would  draw  the  heavy  burn- 
ished irold  of  her  tresses  through  her  hands;  she  would 
turn  her  head  over  her  shoulder  and  glance  at  herself, 
Narcissus-like  :  she  would  gaze  into  the  slumbrous  night- 
like  depths  other  eyes,  with  a  never-ceasing  pride  and 
rejoicing  in  her  own  Loveliness. 

Painters  and  sculptors  had  reproduced  it  in  every 
manifold  phase ;  hut  it  was  the  one  thing  of  which  -he 
never  wearied  : — the  only  thing. 

And  she  required  ii  this  oighl  to  be  al  itsutmosl  heighl  ; 
she  desired  it  to  lie  beyond  even  its  accustomed  measure: 
she  wanted  it  to  dazzle,  enchain,  -ul. due.  appeal,  inflame, 
astonish,  and  subjugate  al  :e,  and  in  even  an  un- 
wonted force.      For — this   niuhi  alone  for  the  firsl  time — 


428  TRICOTRIN, 

she  knew  that  she  would  meet  the  man  who,  looking  at 
her  on  the  grape  wagon  of  the  harvest-feast,  had  said, 

"  She  cannot  be  of  the  people !" 

She  had  never  met  him  hitherto,  although  the  repute 
of  his  fame  had  often  come  to  her.  Those  who  had 
guarded  her  life  had  avoided  him,  not  allowing  her  to 
divine  any  intent  or  perceive  any  purpose  in  their  so 
doing.  She  had  been  little  in  her  own  country,  not  at 
all  in  his  ;  and  for  several  years  he  had  been  absent  in 
the  gilded  exile  of  a  great  state  duty,  that  he  had  ac- 
cepted and  executed  in  onerous  service  to  his  nation. 

But  she  had  remembered  him  with  a  curious  tenacity 
of  remembrance,  in  a  creature  so  prone  to  swiftest  ob- 
livion of  all  things.  She  had  listened  with  eagerness  to 
whatever  rumor  had  said  of  him,  playing  with  his  name 
as  it  will  ever  do  with  names  once  made  of  mark.  She 
had  often  wished,  with  a  curious  mingling  of  fear  and  of 
desire,  that  he  should  return  from  his  rule  in  the  East, 
and  cross  her  path  once  more. 

She  had  no  fear  that  recognition  of  her  would  ever 
awake  in  him.  She  was  too  utterly  changed  ;  even  if  it 
had  been  possible  that  any  memory  of  a  child  seen  once 
on  a  summer  evening  could  remain  with  a  man  who  was 
occupied  with  the  full,  earnest,  arduous  and  lofty  career 
of  a  statesman  and  diplomatist. 

But  she  knew  that  she  herself  could  never  entirely 
banish  the  remembrance  of  how  he  had  seen  her;  of  how 
she  had  wandered  through  his  picture-galleries,  a  name- 
less child ;  of  how  she  had  sat  in  his  farm-servants' 
dairy  chambers,  and  eaten  of  their  honey  and  their  bread, 
like  any  cowherd's  daughter. 

She  knew  that  she  could  never  wholly  forget  this  ;  and 
the  remembrance  was  acute  suffering  to  her. 

She  would  go  into  his  presence  the  sovereign  of  his 
world,  his  equal,  nay,  his  superior  in  rank,  a  beautiful, 
haughty,  courted,  idolized  woman  :  and  she  would  al- 
ways remember. that  if  only  one  of  the  lowest  laborers 
on  his  land  could  recognize  her  and  tell  him  the  simple 
truth,  he  would  know  that  in  all  her  omnipotence  and 
with  all  her  attainments  she  was  little  better  after  all 
than  a  living  lie  to  the  world  that  adored  her. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         429 

They  had  never  met;  they  were  to  meet  this  night, 
And  for  that  cause  she  aspired  to  make  her  beauty  look 
even  more  than  mortal,  and  for  the  sole  time  since  she 
had  seen  her  child's  face  mirrored  in  the  brown  depths 
of  the  Loire,  was  tempted  to  be  almost  discontented  with 
that  gracious  and  prodigal  gift,  and  to  desire  that  it 
should  even  be  something  yet  more  splendid  than  it  was. 

W  hy  did  she  want  this  ? — she  could  not  have  told.  He 
would  not  know — never  could  know — that  when  he  should 
look  upon  her  now  lie  should  see  the  same  features  that 
he  had  once  praised  when  he  had  ridden  at  evening  among 
thevine-fields  of  his  own  lands.  But  she  knew: — and  she 
wanted  to  come  with  all  the  glory  and  magnificence  of  an 
empress  before  the  man  who  had  seen  her  last  as  a  peasant 
child  upon  a  vintage-wagon. 

Proud  as  she  was,  Viva's  was  only  half  the  pride  of 
the  born  patrician;  the  other  half  was  the  pride  of  the 
Pompadours,  of  the  Cabarus,  of  the  Theodosias,  who 
have  sprung  from  tin1  darkness  of  obscurity  into  the  blaze 
of  power.  Her  rank  had  grown  as  natural  to  her  as  it 
is  to  any  legitimate  sovereign;  yet  it  was  perpetually 
marvelous  to  her  as  it  never  can  be  to  those  who  have 
enjoyed  possession  and  dignity  from  their  birth  upward. 

In  one  of  the  reception-chambers  of  the  palace  to  which 
she  went  that  night,  a  knot  of  those  who  guide  the  des- 
tinies of  nations  were  standing  conversing,  at  the  moment 
of  her  entrance. 

One  of  them  leaned  his  arm  on  an  ebony  cabinet,  and 
was  turned  slightly  away  from  the  brilliancy  of  the 
thronged  rooms.  lie  was  of  lofty  and  slender  stature; 
very  fair,  with  a  grave,  passionless  beauty  oi  feature,  and 
an  exceeding  serenity  and  pride  of  bearing:  a  man  to  be 
singled  out  by  the  mosl  careless  spectator,  whether  in  the 
press  of  a  street  crowd  or  the  glitter  of  a  throne-room, — 
a  man  who  bore  all  the  impress  of  one  who  had  played  a 
high  part,  and  held  a  high  name  among  the  World's 
leaders. 

The  ministers  speaking  with  him  paused  and  broke  oil' 
their  discourse,  and  glanced  through  the  rooms. 

"There  she  is,"  said  one  of  them.  "  hid  you  ever  see 
so  magnificent  a  creature?" 


430  TRICOTRIN, 

"I  cannot  tell.  Her  beauty  remains  only  a  rumor  to 
me." 

"  What !    You  have  never  met  her?" 

"  Never.  I  have  heard  so  much  of  her  that  I  have,  I 
confess,  somewhat  avoided  this  marvel,  the  catalogue  of 
whose  charms  has  so  often  wearied  me,  and  whose  ca- 
prices I  have  known  to  interfere  with  the  most  serious 
deliberations." 

"  You  are  prejudiced.  Wait  until  you  have  seen  this 
sorceress.  You  do  not  know  until  then  how  beautiful  a 
woman  can  be." 

"Surely?    I  have  seen  so  many  beautiful  women." 

He  spoke  with  a  smile,  but  with  a  certain  incredulous 
indifference  to  the  subject  which  he  was  too  courteous  to 
express.  Also,  it  was  true  that  he  had  avoided,  at  such 
times  as  he  had  been  near  her  presence,  this  woman  of 
whom  they  spoke.  He  had  heard  nothing  of  her  that  at- 
tracted him  ;  much  that  repelled.  Her  coquetry,  her  cold- 
ness, her  neglect  of  her  husband,  her  imperious  volatile 
caprices,  her  wayward  exercise  of  her  wide  power,  her 
absolute  abandonment  to  the  utmost  extravagance  of 
pleasure :  all  these  repulsed  his  taste  in  women. 

"You  are  skeptical,"  said  one  of  the  statesmen  beside 
him.     "Look  there,  then — and  believe." 

He  turned  his  head,  and  looked  as  they  bade  him. 

Among  the  brilliant  throng  he  saw  her,  diamond- 
crowned,  diamond-winged,  with  a  troop  of  little  children 
of  the  highest  races  in  the  land  playing  before  her  and 
behind  her  as  elves  and  fairies,  as  Pucks,  Peas-blossoms, 
Cobwebs,  and  all  the  joyous  band  of  Oberon,  scattering 
lilies  and  laburnums,  carnations  and  camellias  in  her  path. 
It  was  summer  still  for  her  and  them,  though  out  in  the 
streets  an  aged  woman  froze  to  death  in  an  archway,  from 
snow  and  from  starvation. 

"She  is  beautiful,  indeed  !"  said  Estmere,  under  his 
breath.  At  that  moment  she  passed  close  by  him,  in  the 
midst  of  her  laughing  cherubic  fairies, — and  their  glances 
met. 

She  saw  once  more  the  blue,  tranquil,  thoughtful  eyes 
that  she  had  likened  in  her  childhood  to  those  of  Arthur 
of  England — eyes  that  she  had  never  forgotten.     And  in 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         4;»1 

her  own  there  came  a  look  of  recognition,  over  her  face 
passed  a  flush  of  surprise,  of  pleasure,  and  of  apprehension 
all  commingled.  The  look  was  gone,  the  warmth  was 
faded,  almost  as  soon  as  they  had  come,  but  he  had  caught 
them, — he  who,  to  his  own  knowledge,  never  had  beheld 
her.  Others  saw  them  also,  and  thought, — "Is  it  true 
that  they  have  never  met  before?" 

She  Heated  past  him  in  all  the  magnificence  of  her  pa- 
geant: he  never  dreamed  that,  once  ere  then,  looking  at 
her  when  she  had  sat  crowned  with  grape-leaves  by  the 
-antry  upon  his  lands,  he  had  said  other — "She  cannot 
be  of  the  people." 

The  air  of  the  world  she  dwelt  in  transfigures  like  the 
breath  of  the  frost,  and  changes  the  wild-flower  spray  as 
though  by  magic  into  a  glittering,  chill,  exquisite  thing, 
dazzling  as  diamonds.  But  is  the  flower's  fragrance  any 
longer  left  ? 

Awhile  later,  and  his  presentation  to  her  was  offered  in 
such  fashion  that  he  had  no  power  left  for  the  discourtesy 
of  refusal:  and  as  lie  bent  before  her  and  spoke  in  the 
melodious  chill  tones  that  she  still  remembered,  she  could 
not,  with  all  her  self-command,  retain  the  perfect  calm 
and  negligence  of  her  accustomed  manner.  And  be,  a 
man  far  too  high-souled  fur  vanity,  and  far  too  wearied  to 
seek  for  conquest,  wondered  to  himself  what  interest  he 
could  possess  lor  this  patrician  coquette,  to  whom  he  was 
wholly  a  stranger. 

lie  lingered  a  very  brief  while  beside  her;  and  passed 
onward,  resigning  his  place  to  her  more  eager  courtier-: 
for  tin'  fu-i  time  she  had  failed  to  see  admiration  in  the 
glance  that  had  fallen  on  her,  for  the  firsl  time  a  chilliness 
of. disappointed  expectation  touched  her. 

"  The  instincl  of  my  childhood  was  a  just  one :  he  alone 
looks  'great,'"  she  thought,  and  in  her  soul  she  felt  with 
bitterness,  "And  he  alone  sees  no  beauty  in  me!" 

She  often  looked  \'<<v  him  that  night,  bul  she  saw  him 
no  more,      lie  had  quitted  the  palace  very  early. 

"Is  she  t i ' •  t  perfect  './-' f  his  acquaintance  had  asked 

him  that   night 

Estmere  had  answered,  "  No." 
"No!     What  does  she  lack,  then?" 


432  TRICOTRIN, 

"Feeling.     That  woman  lives  only  for  herself." 

And  clay  after  day,  night  after  night,  they  met  thus  : 
and  he  greeted  her  and  avoided  her  thus,  with  that  cere- 
monious courtesy  which  is  chillier  than  any  rudeness  or 
bitterness.  Seeing  him  continually  she  yet  saw  nothing 
of  him.  If  he  had  any  sentiment  toward  her,  it  was 
aversion  rather  than  homage;  yet,  from  the  high-bred 
serenity  of  his  habitual  manner,  she  could  not  extract  so 
much  flattery  as  would  have  even  been  found  in  censure 
or  in  insolence.  He  simply  neglected  her  :  keener  affront, 
harder  offense,  there  could  scarcely  have  been  against 
her. 

The  exception  of  this  one  man  from  her  subjugation 
moved  her  to  more  interest  in  him  than  she  ever  felt  for 
any  of  those  who  had  been  fooled  by  her  glance  and 
made  wretched  by  her  word.  Although  she,  from  a  cer- 
tain lofty  pride  in  her,  had  been  utterly  untouched  by 
any  of  the  passion  she  inspired,  she  had  never  restrained 
herself  from  the  fullest  exercise  of  her  sway  over  men's 
souls ;  she  had  never  forborne  from  using  the  power 
that  her  beauty  bestowed  on  her,  using  it  with  the  utter- 
most witchery  and  enhancement  that  were  possible.  She 
had  seen  the  extremes  of  passion,  of  devotion,  of  despair  : 
she  had  studied  the  natures  of  her  many  lovers,  till  she 
had  gained  as  deep  an  insight  into  their  weakness  as 
Coriolis  herself  could  have  attained.  And  Estmere  alone 
escaped  her, — the  only  man  whom  she  had  been  tempted 
to  meet  with  interest,  to  treat  with  reverence ! 

Nor  could  she  have  her  vengeance  for  his  neglect  by 
mockery  of  him,  by  disdain  for  him.  He  was  as  far  re- 
moved from  her  satire  as  he  was  from  her  seductions. 
There  was  that  about  him  which  hushed  the  vengeful 
ironies  that  rose  to  her  lips.  He  had  an  influence  over 
her  that  she  could  not  resist,  even  while  his  studious 
avoidance  of  her  most  deeply  incensed  and  mortified  her. 

He  was  "great,"  as  her  childish  fancy  had  felt.  Not 
by  rank,  or  wealth,  or  honor,  in  which  very  many  of  her 
present  world  could  far  excel,  and  almost  all  could  equal, 
him  ;  but  by  the  force  of  natural  character,  which  gave 
an  unstudied  greatness  to  all  his  thoughts,  motives,  and 
actions ;  which  lent  a  perfect  and  harmonious  repose  to 


THE   STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         433 

his  slightest  words  and  movements ;  which  rendered  every- 
thing that  was  unworthy,  insincere,  untrue,  or  exagger- 
ated, impossible  to  him ;  and  which  made  base  things 
show  their  baseness,  lying  lips  halt  in  their  falsehood, 
and  unreal  pretensions  sink  to  their  due  insignificance 
before  him.  He  was  a  statesman,  an  orator,  a  leader; 
and  was  great  in  all  these;  but  greater  in  nothing  than 
in  the  dignity  and  simplicity  of  his  life,  public  and  pri- 
vate :  just,  sincere,  incapable  of  time-service,  indifferent 
to  every  splendid  bribe,  gentle  of  temper,  if  severe  in  judg- 
ment, he  won  the  reverence  of  all  who  came  near  his 
influence,  and  was  honored  even  by  the  foes  who  resented 
the  proud  silence  of  his  temperament  and  the  patrician 
tenets  of  his  code. 

And  it  was  precisely  this  character  which  attracted  the 
mutinous,  brilliant,  uncertain,  and  imperious  nature  of 
this  capricious  and  wayward  woman.  She  was  in  her 
sweetest  moods  when  he  was  near;  she  gave  him  her 
gayest  wit,  her  airiest  grace,  her  fairest  smiles,  and  her 
most  dazzling  radiance; — all  in  vain. 

Not  the  coldest  word  of  admiration  ever  passed  his  lips 
to  her ;  and  she  never  once  could  change  the  calm,  pas- 
sionless, grave  regard  of  the  deep-blue  meditative  eyes 
that  were  like  the  eyes  of  the  Roman  Augustus. 


CHAPTER  XLIV. 

In  a  miserable  garret  in  the  Quarter  of  the  Odeon,  a 
boy  of  eighteen  lay  on  his  little  truckle-bed,  prostrate 
wii It  ague  ami  with  fever. 

Although  the  winter  had  stolen  into  earliest  spring,  the 
weather  was  still  hitter,  and  full  of  bdow  and  lee,  and 
sweeping  northern  winds.     The  yonth  Buffered  greatly. 

lie  was  an  arl-stndent  ;  the  seventh  son  of  a  pour  wid- 
owed woman,  who  kept  a  wretched  wine  and  tobacco 
shop  in  the  extreme  east  of  France.  lie  could  have  had 
no  help  from  her  if  he  had  asked  for  it,  and  he  was  too 

37 


434  TRICOTRIN, 

proud  and  too  tender  of  heart  to  ask,  choosing  rather  to 
perish  in  this  Paris,  that  had  been  the  Eden  of  his  de- 
sires, than  to  take  one  copper  fraction  from  that  scanty 
store  of  his  helpless  mother.  He  dreamed  divine  dreams 
of  his  own  future,  of  the  honors  he  would  win,  of  the 
medals  he  would  bear  off,  of  the  pictures  he  would  paint, 
of  the  prize  he  would  earn  that  would  send  him  to  study 
amid  the  greatness  of  Rome ;  and,  meantime,  he  orna- 
mented sweetmeat-boxes,  as  a  means  of  livelihood  in  such 
days  as  his  tertian  ague  left  him  free,  and  endured  the 
daily  agonies  that  killed  Gilbert  and  Hegisippe  Moreau, 
and  still  kill  their  kind — lads  that  an  imperial  nation  has 
no  time  to  count. 

He  was  very  ill,  very  miserable,  very  lonely;  he  was 
of  a  shy  and  silent  temper,  and  had  made  no  friends. 
His  last  coin  was  gone ;  he  was  too  tortured  by  his  dis- 
ease to  work.  He  thought  he  should  die,  and  die  alone. 
And  at  eighteen  both  death  and  solitude  are  hard. 

He  was  glad  to  hear  a  knock  at  his  door — glad  even 
though  it  were  but  his  landlord,  to  whom  he  owed  rent, 
come  again  to  curse  him  for  a  sickly  beggar.  When  he 
saw  who  it  was  that  entered,  his  hollow  eyes  lightened 
with  an  exceeding  joy. 

"It  is  you  !"  he  said,  softly,  with  a  sigh  of  infinite  con- 
tent and  gratitude. 

His  visitant  came  up  to  him,  and  smiled,  and  spoke 
pleasant,  soothing,  cheerful  words,  and  let  a  little  black 
monkey  leap  out  of  his  arms  and  play  her  antics  on  the 
pallet  till  they  brought  a  wan  laughter  on  to  the  boy's 
white  cracked  lips.  Then  he  thrust  some  billets  of  wood 
that  he  had  brought  under  his  arm  into  the  empty  stove, 
and  set  light  to  them,  and  flung  open  the  lattice  for  the 
cold  but  crisp  air  to  enter ;  he  poured  some  rich  wine  out 
of  a  flask  he  had  in  his  pocket  into  a  tin  pot,  and  heated 
it  when  the  wood  had  caught  flame  ;  he  gave  it  to  the  lad 
upon  the  bed,  with  spices  simmering  in  it,  and  a  fresh 
roll  of  white  flour  to  eat  with  it.  Finally,  be  sat  himself 
down  beside  the  one  little  deal  table,  on  which  the 
brushes,  and  colors,  and  boxes  waiting  for  ornamentation 
stood,  and  drew  one  of  the  sweetmeat- trunks  to  him,  and 
began  to  paint  on  it,  and  gild  its  sides,  and  make  it  gay 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         435 

with  flowers  and  fruits  and  birds,  expending  on  it  all  the 
fair  conceits  of  a  luxuriant  fancy. 

The  youth  lay  still  and  watched  him  with  all  the  grati- 
tude he  was  too  weak  to  utter  in  speech. 

Seven  times  in  two  weeks  had  his  savior  come  thus; 
and  restored  life  to  him  ;  had  done  his  labor  for  him  ;  and 
brought  him  the  coins  of  his  wage;  had  silenced  the 
wrath  and  the  complaints  of  the  landlord;  and  spoken  of 
the  coming  spring,  and  of  the  healing  it  would  bear  upon 
its  wings.  Spoken,  too,  of  a  cottage  that  he  knew  in  the 
village  of  Barbizan,  where,  for  a  trifle  a  week,  a  lad  might 
be  housed  and  fed,  and  watch  the  great  painters  iu  their 
holiday,  and  have  around  him  all  the  sweetness  of  the 
forest  air,  and  see  the  primroses  hud  forth  from  among 
the  moss,  and  the  rabbits  steal  among  the  fern,  and  the 
tender  leaves  of  the  oaks  unfold  in  the  bright  young  year. 

And  when  he  had  tried  to  thank  him,  and  to  ask  him 
who  he  was  and  whence  he  came,  his  redeemer  had 
laughed  a  little,  and  answered  only: 

"Tut!— I  am  Tricotrin." 

A  ml  the  boy,  though  but  a  new-comer  into  the  city,  had 
known  all  that  the  name  spoke  ;   and  had  asked  no  more. 

His  friend  sat  there  through  half  the  day,  painting  the 
lids  of  the  boxes,  wasting  on  them  a  hundred  deiicate 
graces,  a  hundred  grotesque  fancies,  a  hundred  forms  of 
loveliness  and  picturesqueness:  because  when  genius 
abides  in  a  man  it  will  never  let  him  do  aught  ill,  but  will 
ever  thrust  itself  oul  in  any  work  of  his  hand,  be  it  of  the 
simplesl  or  the  slightest. 

He  was  only  painting  on  sugar-boxes  that  would  be 
sold  for  tenpence  a  piece.  Bui  1  he  creative  power  in  him 
called  beauty  into  these  common  things,  and  he  sketched 
on  them  as  a  king's  painter  sketches  on  a  palace-cornice. 

Twice  or  thrice  he  paused  to  give  some  food  or  some 
wine  to  the  lad.  Sometimes  he  went  on  with  his  labor 
in  unbroken  silence.  Sometimes  he  called  boyish  laugh- 
ter on  to  the  youth's  pale  lips  by  -ay  drolleries  of  story 
or  airy  vagaries  of  wit.  Sometimes  he  spoke— and  this 
was  oftenest— of  that  little  oesl  in  Barbizan,  where  so 
soon  the  hreath  of  the  spring  would  be  bringing  the  birds 
from  their  nests,  the  foliage  from  the  boughs,  the  roses 


436  TRICOTRIN, 

from  the  briars,  the  wild  hyacinths  from  the  grass ;  and 
where  he  said  that  the  boy  should  go. 

Then,  when  he  had  done  all  the  work  that  was  there, 
he  bade  the  lad  a  cheerful  good  night ;  left  him  with  a 
big  jug  of  milk  beside  him  to  ease  his  thirst ;  piled  more 
wood  on  the  stove ;  and  went  carrying  the  boxes  with 
him,  that  he  might  get  the  payment  for  them,  and  put  it 
in  the  hands  of  the  landlord,  who  had  sworn  that  if  the 
rent  went  unpaid  the  youth  should  be  turned  out  in  the 
street. 

As  he  went  down  the  stairs  a  child  met  him,  sent  from 
the  house  that  he  dwelt  in,  with  a  letter  received  in  his 
absence. 

His  face  changed  color  as  he  broke  the  seal  and  read 
the  one  line  within  it— — It  was  simply: 

"  Can  you  come  to  me  during  the  day  ?" 

He  knew  in  whose  handwriting  that  brief  summons 
was  penned — knew  it,  without  the  armorial  bearings  and 
the  cipher  that  decorated  the  glossy  sheet. 

A  thrill  of  hot  delight  ran  through  him.  His  heart 
beat  quickly  and  joyously ;  his  eyes  flashed  and  lightened 
with  pleasure. 

She  had  not  wholly  forgotten  ! 

He  watched  her  life ;  but  he  scarce  ever  went  into 
her  presence.  He  had  accepted  oblivion,  and  he  was  too 
proud  to  assert  a  claim  that  she  had  forgotten.  She  was 
happy, — he  let  her  be.  If  ever  the  time  came  when  she 
knew  what  grief  was,  he  would  then  go  to  her,  not  before. 

But  with  her  summons  fresh  joy  flashed  through  him. 
He  did  not  pause  to  speculate,  to  wonder,  to  doubt ;  he 
only  cared  for  the  fact  that  once  more  he  had  become  a 
desire  and  a  necessity  in  her  life. 

He  did  the  duty  to  which  he  had  pledged  himself  first. 
He  turned  down  the  street  in  which  the  bonbon  box-maker 
dwelt,  sold  his  merchandise,  received  a  gold  piece  in  ex- 
change, and  appeased  with  it  the  landlord's  avaricious 
greed.  Then  he  was  free ;  and  went  with  the  swiftness 
of  a  greyhound  whither  she  had  called  him. 

His  pulses  were  throbbing  and  his  brain  was  dizzy  as 
he  wTas  ushered  into  her  presence.  He  did  not  know 
what  he  hoped,  yet  hope  was  strong  in  him.     He  gave 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         43 1 

joy  away  so  often,  with  such  lavish  hands,  to  others,  it 
could  not  seem  strange  to  him  one  day  that  gift  might  be 
returned  back  into  his  own  breast. 

"You  sent  for  me?"  he  asked,  eagerly,  with  that 
radiance  still  on  his  face,  as  he  approached  her. 

She  turned  to  him  with  the  instinctive  coquetry  of  her 
nature. 

"You  never  come  to  see  me  unless  I  do !" 
The  reproach  was  very  sweet  to  him;  the  tone  was 
like  the  accent  of  her  early  years. 

"Why  do  I  not?"  he  said,  gently.  "It  is  because 
such  women  as  you  do  not  have  one  want  left  for  thoso 
who  can  only  bring  them  love  to  fill  up.     You  know  too 

well  that  if  you  ever  thought  of  me " 

He  paused  abruptly  ;  in  his  code  the  one  who  stood  as 
creditor  for  an  unpaid  debt  of  gratitude  must  never  urge 
a  claim  forgotten  by  the  debtor.  Moreover,  he  who  had 
loved  ber  all  her  life  through  was  too  proud  to  speak  to 
her  of  a  love  she  had  chosen  to  cast  away,  undesired,  un- 
recalled. 

"I  do  often  think  of  you,"  she  murmured,  hurriedly. 
"  Can  you  deem  me  so  dead  to  all  feeling?  You  !  who 
were  all  the  world  to  me  oncel" 

"  There  is  no  need  to  remember  that.  Others  have 
done  much  greater  things  for  you  since.  But  is  there 
any  service  I  can  render  you  now  ?" 

The  unintentional  reproach  which  lay  in  the  inference 
that  she  must  have  some  need  of  him  or  she  would  not 
have  remembered  him,  escaped  her. 

"Service? — no,"  she  answered,  with  a  tinge  of  embar- 
rassment,    "  Do  you  recollect  Lord  Estmere?" 

lie  started,  ami  moved  slightly  away ;  all  the  glow, 
and  light,  and  warmth  died  from  oil'  his  face ;  his  eyes, 
which  hail  dwell  on  ber  with  such  gladness  and  such  fond- 
ness, Iosl  i  Inir  radiance. 

"  [s  it  of  him  you  desire  to  speak  to  me?" 
"I  have  seen  him  again,  that  is  all,"  she  answered  In- 
differently, conscious  how  insufficient  must  seem  the  cause, 
for  the  action.    "Ami — if  I  remember  rightly,  you  seemed 
to  know  much  of  him.     Is  it  so  ?" 
"I  know  of  him — yes." 

37* 


438  TRICOTRIN, 

"Then — do  you  know  anything  of  him  that  the  world 
does  not?" 

"Why  do  you  ask  that?" 

"Why?"  she  said,  impatiently,  while,  in  her  own  de- 
spite, a  flush  of  shame  for  the  interest  she  had  allowed 
herself  to  show  for  a  man  who  gave  her  no  homage  and 
no  admiration,  passed  quickly  over  her  face.  "  It  seemed 
strange  to  meet  him  in  the  world — that  is  all." 

"  You  fear  his  recognition  ?" 

"Oh,  no!  What  have  /  in  common  with  the  child 
crowned  in  that  village-wagon  I"  she  interrupted  him 
with  capricious  impatience;  forgetful  of  the  cruelty  to  him 
that  lay  in  the  scornful  sentence.  "  I  was  only  curious 
to  hear  anything  you  could  tell  me  of  him ;  because " 

"  He  interests  you  ?" 

She  laughed  with  careless,  contemptuous  indifference; 
but  he  saw  that  her  eyes  fell,  and  that  the  flush  was  still 
on  her  face. 

"  Interest !  I  think  nothing  interests  me, — except  new 
diamonds!  I  mean,  because, — I  imagined,  you  must 
some  time  or  other  have  come  in  contact  with  him.  Was 
I  right?" 

"  Lord  Estmere  and  I  are  total  strangers." 

"  Do  you  think  any  ill  of  him  ?" 

"  I  believe  him  to  be  one  of  the  noblest  and  most  high- 
souled  men  on  earth." 

The  answer  was  sincere,  and  given  in  the  purity  of 
truth  ;  but  it  went  hard  with  him,  for  all  that,  to  give  it 
utterance. 

She  looked  at  him  silently  a  moment;  swift  in  penetra- 
tion, when  she  was  not  too  careless  to  exercise  the  power, 
she  saw  that  there  was  something  withheld  from  her. 

"  Then — do  you  know  anything  of  his  life  that  the 
world  does  not  ?" 

"  Of  his  life  ?     Nothing." 

"  There  was  some  terrible  story  of  his  wife,  was  there 
not?" 

"  She  was  false  to  him — yes.  The  story  is  known  to 
the  whole  world.  She  was  a  high-born  woman,  an  ex- 
ceedingly beautiful  woman,  and  as  sensual  and  as  vile  as 
any  courtesan,  at  soul.     He  wedded  her  when  he  was  but 


TIIE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         439 

a  youth  ;  he  adored  her,  I  believe  ;  and  she — lived  with 
him  a  few  years  only  to  dishonor  his  name  forever  for 
sake  of  a  Greek  slave  in  their  household!' 

"A  Greek  slave!" 

"  Well — with  the  nature  and  the  vices  of  a  slave  ;  cow- 
ardly, timorous,  false,  and  vengeful.  The  creature  had 
owed  all  to  Estmere's  race, — a  handsome  boy  of  Athens, 
made  first  page  and  then  secretary;  an  Adonis,  pam- 
pered and  caressed  for  his  girlish  loveliness ;  a  graceful 
hound  that  first  fawned  and  then  bit!  That  was  the 
paramour  for  whom  Eustace  Estmere  was  abandoned  ; — 
abandoned,  I  say  !  The  sin  was  not  half  so  openly  sinned. 
Ii  was  the  old  tale  of  treachery  and  dishonor  which  did 
not  hesitate  to  taint  his  own  hearthstone!" 

"But  she  is  divorced  from  him  ?" 

"  Of  course  !     But  do  you  think  that  such  a  stain  can 
ever  leave  a  man's  life  as  it  found  it?  do  you  think  the 
publicity  of  so  close  a  shame  can  even  pass  away  from  a 
proud  and  a  sensitive  nature  ?" 
•That  is  true;   I  forgot." 

She  thought  of  the  grave  fair  face  that  she  had  once 
likened  to  the  ''King  of  the  greal  Pendragonship,"  and  of 
the  anguish  which  in  youth  had  gnawed  at  the  heart  of 
the  man  now  so  passionless  and  so  tranquil. 

She  perceived  that  some  chord  she  could  not  trace  con- 
nected Tricotrin  with  the  dishonor  for  which  he  felt  so 
keenly.  She  remembered  too.  more  vividly  than  she  re- 
membered most  things  of  that  forgotten  time,  the  impa- 
tience with  which  he  had  heard  her  quote  Estmere's 
praise  of  her  after  the  yine-festival.  She  did  not  know 
that  her  young  Faust  of  the  golden  toys  had*been  the 
Bon  of  this  dishonored  wife.  She  did  not  know  that  he 
withheld  that  fad  from  her  lest  its  disquietude  should 
haunt  and  disturb  her  peace. 

••  Then  you  can  tell  me  no  more  of  him  than  this  ?"  she 
.-aid  at  last,  with  a  certain  disappointment  in  her  voice. 

1  [<•  looked  quickly  at  her. 

"Of  Estmere?  No,"  he  -aid.  with  bitter  impatience. 
"Whal  is  it  you  can  wanl  to  be  told  ?  His  career. lies 
before  the  world;  he  is  a  greal  man;  and  pays  the  pen- 
alty of  such  greatness  in  having  the  .--tare  of  a  million 


440  TRICOT  R  IN, 

curious  eyes  fastened  on  every  dearest  secret  of  his  pri- 
vate life.  Love  betrayed  him  ;  he  wedded  himself  to 
public  ambitions.  You  can  tell  better  than  I  whether 
they  content  him :  if  you  take  interest  sufficient  in  him 
to  make  the  matter  your  study." 

She  gave  a  restless  movement. 

"  I  imagine  Lord  Estmere  has  other  aims  beside  hap- 
piness. I  scarcely  think  any  great  man  is  likely  to  be 
happy ;  that  belongs  to  peasants,  to  students,  to  youth, 
and  provincialism.  It  is  not  much  known  in  his  world 
and  in  mine.  If  we  are  amused  it  is  the  utmost  we  ask. 
You  do  not  think  it  possible  that  he  should  recognize 
me?" 

"You  fear  it?" 

"  Fear  itl"  she  echoed,  as  she  rose  with  an  impetuous 
movement,  and  turned  her  head  instinctively  to  the  mir- 
ror. "  Fear  it !  Good  Heaven  !  Of  course  I  fear  it — I 
should  die  of  shame! " 

"  You  live  on  falsehood,  then  ?  A  dangerous  food — 
one  sure,  soon  or  late,  to  end  in  utter  famine.  But  you 
need  have  no  dread  on  this  score.  You  were  but  a  fair 
child  then  ;  now " 

"Now  ?" — she  laughed  softly,  a  low,  victorious  laugh 
of  <;onscious  power. 

"Now — you  know  well  enough  what  you  are.  Every 
man  tells  it  you  in  eloquence  that  would  be  the  most  sick- 
ening tale  you  could  hear  were  not  vanity  the  sole  passion 
that  knows  no  satiety!" 

She  made  no  reply ;  a  flush  of  resentment  gleamed  in 
her  brilliant  eyes,  and  unspoken  words  trembled  passion- 
ately on  h'er  lips.  She  held  them  back  by  the  lingering 
remembrance  of  the  gratitude  she  owed  him  ;  she  knew 
that  she  could  not  deny  him  the  right  of  a  speech  that 
none  else  would  have  dared  to  utter  to  her. 

He  looked  at  her  in  silence  many  moments. 

"You  never  think  of  a  second  marriage?"  he  asked, 
suddenly. 

"  Think  of  it ! — I  cannot  choose  but  think  of  it !  It  is 
always  being  forced  upon  my  thoughts!  But  if  you  mean 
do  I  intend  one, — no !" 

"And  wherefore?" 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         441 

"Ask  me  rather  why  I  should  1"  she  said,  with  a  care- 
less laugh.     "  What  is  there  I  could  gain  by  it?" 

"  Gain  is  your  only  god,  then  ?" 

"  That  is  very  harsh!  I  do  not  think  I  am  avaricious. 
But  I  have  absolutely  all  that  I  can  desire;  I  should  risk 
jarring  the  harmony  of  my  life,  and  I  should  add  nothing 
worth  adding  to  it  by  any  other  alliance.  Besides, — my 
liberty  charms  me.  I  might  marry  for  a  throne  perhaps  ; 
but  there  are  none  vacant  just  now  1" 

The  levity  and  negligence  of  the  reply  grated  cruelly 
on  him  : — she  spoke  of  wedding  with  the  sovereigns  of 
the  earth  as  though  she  were  imperial  born,  to  the  man 
but  for  whose  charity  she  would  have  been  left  to  beg- 
gary and  bastardy ! 

"  You  speak  in  jest,"  he  said  gravely.  "  Such  jests  are 
well  enough  in  such  a  youth  as  yours,  but  if  you  have  no 
other  creed  with  which  to  meet  the  weariness  of  waning 
years  and  the  loneliness  of  age,  I  pity  you  !" 

"  Pity  me  /" 

She  laughed  in  all  the  glory  of  her  beauty,  all  the  pleni- 
tude of  her  power,  all  the  rich  and  full  sufficiency  of  her 
existence ! 

"  Yes,  I  pity  you,"  he  answered  her,  with  that  accent 
in  his  voice  which  had  always  stilled  and  moved  her  in 
her  childhood.  "  Even  from  women  as  beautiful  as  you, 
time  steals  their  charms;  time  brings  satiety,  lassitude, 
envy,  and  the  disappointment  of  dead  hopes;  time  con- 
fronts them  with  rivals,  and  takes  the  bloom  from  the 
cheeks,  and  the  light  from  the  eyes,  and  t he  gladness  from 
the  soul:  in  those  days  of  darkness  it  will  be  ill  with  you 
if  in  the  days  of  your  youth  you  have  only  gained  vani- 
ties thai  wither  and  ambitions  thai  cloy,  if  you  have  not 
learned  the  sweetness  and  strength  that  lie  in  unselfish 
love  and  impersonal  thought.  You  reign  now — ah,  yes! 
And  1  can  well  understand  how  your  kingdom  is  so  fair 
that  you  never  remember  how  time  like  the  sea  eats  away 
its  bright  shores,  and  how  with  each  year  it  will  grow  less 
— and  less — and  less, — when  once  the  season  of  your 
youth  is  passed.  Hut  what  I  fear  for  you,  in  your  future, 
are  the  bitterness  and  the  solitude  thai  you  will  know, 
if — having  disdained  the  anchorage  of  love — you  shall  be 


442  TRICOT  R  IN, 

left  alone  on  the  rock  of  your  pride,  when  your  kingdom 
of  beauty  has  sunk  out  of  sight  beneath  the  tide  of  the 
devouring  years." 

The  voice  that  she  had  known  so  well ;  the  poetic  lan- 
guage that  had  used  to  move  her  heart  like  music  had 
still  their  spell  for  her ;  she  listened,  incredulous  and  un- 
willing to  be  touched,  yet  stirred  by  the  words  against 
her  own  desire. 

But  the  spirit  of  rebellion,  the  habits  of  mockery  in 
her  would  not  let  her  own  to  that  reluctant  emotion. 

"You  mistake  very  much,  I  think!"  she  said,  negli- 
gently. "  I  do  not  believe  a  woman's  power  so  evanes- 
cent ;  when  youth  goes  there  is  intellect  left.  J  am  little 
of  a  student, — but  the  play  of  political  power  amuses  me 
well.  As  for  love, — pray  credit  me!  that  may  be  the  Al- 
pha and  Omega  of  provincial  life,  it  is  merely  one  among 
a  )  liousand  other  arts  and  distractions  in  the  world  that 
I  live  in.  You  may  hear  it  made  the  be-all  and  end-all 
of  existence  at  a  peasant's  bridal ;  but  it  wears  another 
aspect  in  our  drawing-rooms." 

"  I  know.  It  is  represented  by  vice,  intrigue,  ambi- 
tion, and  avarice!  Madame  de  Lira — think  me  as  harsh 
as  you  will, — I  confess  that  the  courtesan,  who  dances  in 
the  paint  and  tinsel  of  her  wretched  trade,  is  not  in  my 
sight  much  the  inferior  of  you  great  ladies,  who  wed 
yourselves  for  gain,  and  intrigue  for  aggrandizement  from 
your  bridal  to  your  death-hour !  I  am  not  sure,  after  all, 
that  when  in  your  childhood  I  dissuaded  you  from  en- 
trance on  an  actress's  career,  I  did  not  withhold  you  from 
the  more  honest,  if  the  less  lucrative,  position  of  the 
two."      * 

She  heard  him  in  mute  amaze,  her  eyes  surveying  with 
a  grand  wrath  the  man  who  dared  bring  such  bare  truths 
as  these  into  her  presence :  who  dared  force  the  naked- 
ness of  an  unpolished  fact  upon  the  elegant  artifices  of  her 
daily  life.  She  said  nothing ;  but  with  a  bow,  in  which 
all  her  anger  and  all  her  dignity  were  mutely  uttered,  she 
swept  past  him  and  out  of  the  chamber. 

"  Can  nothing  teach  him  what  I  have  become !"  she 
thought,  with  passionate  forgetfulness  of  every  other 
thing  than  of  her  own  eminence  and  sovereignty. 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  443 

It  seemed  to  her  almost  a  crime  against  her  that  a  man 
should  live  who  held  it  in  his  power  thus  to  arraign  and 
to  insult  her. 

She  forgot  thai  she  had  summoned  him;  she  only,  re- 
membered that  be  had  dared  to  speak  to  her — the  truth. 

When  she  had  left  him,  he  paced  to  and  fro  the  deserted 
room,  with  his  head  sunk  upon  his  chest,  and  his  heart 
sick  within  him. 

She  had  stung  him  far  more  deeply  than  she  had 
dnamed:  she  had  dealt  him  a  blow  she  had  been  all  un- 
conscious of  striking.  He  had  come  to  her  bidding  with 
the  gladness  of  a  love  eager  to  spend  its  loyalty  in  service, 
with  the  unselfishness  of  a  tenderness,  oblivious  of  its 
own  claims,  and  grateful  for  mere  remembrance;  and  he 
had  been  only  met  with  the  name  of  Bstmere! 

"  Must  he  have  all — even  her  thoughts!"  he  said,  in 
the  bitterness  of  his  soul.  The  time  had  been, — nay,  the 
lime  was  still, — when,  thinking  of  tin  career  of  the  great 
noble,  lie  had  balanced  its  pain,  its  toil,  its  fretting  ambi- 
tions, its  early  dishonor,  its  surrender  to  the  fetters  of 
public  service  against  the  freedom  and  the  careless  joys 
of  his  own  life,  and  had  laughed  as  he  felt  how  free  was 
the  one  from  the  cares  of  the  other.  Now  for  the  first 
time  there  arose  that  which  he  envied  Estmere. 

For, the  love  with  which  he  had  loved  t he  fair  child  who 
had  wandered  with  him  through  the  illuminated  streets 
of  the  rejoicing  city, — who  had  laughed  with  him  among 
the  vineyards  of  her  river-home,  and  danced  for  him  with 
the  wild  poppies  in  her  hair,  and  sung  to  him  as  she 
bounded  aloft,  upon  the  grape-press, — was  love  tenfold 
more  passionate,  because  tenfold  more  hopeless,  for  this 
imperious  ami  peerless  woman  who  would  almost  have 
.-corned  to  yield  her  beauty  even  to  a  monarch's  em- 
brace.-. 

A  -  he  led  her  palace,  the  song  so  often  on  his  lips  was 
silent  ;  his  head,  always  so  gallantly  civet,  was  .-link;  his 
heart  u  a-  heavy  within  him. 

lie  thought  he  had  controlled  this^weakness  in  him; — 
but  though  passion  when  blessed  with  possession  flic.-  as 
fast  as  the  hues  of  tin'  rainbow, — passion,  whose  only 
food  is  pain,  glows  on  and  on,  unblenched,  like  the  red  in 


444  TRICOTRIN, 

an  Egyptian  sky,  through  the  long  years  of  di ought  and 
famine. 

He  bent  his  steps  toward  the  religious  hospital,  where 
a  few  nights  before  he  had  left  the  dying  frame  of  his 
enemy. 

The  words  that  he  had  lately  spoken  had  recalled  to 
him  a  forgotten  duty. 

"Is  it  better  with  him?"  he  asked  at  the  entrance- 
gate. 

"  Scarcely.     He  will  never  recover,  we  think." 

"I  have  three  gold  pieces  on  me  ;  all  I  have  :  will  you 
take  them  ?" 

"  Take  them  ?     For  this  man  ?" 

"Yes — spend  it  for  him  in  such  fashion  as  seems 
wisest  to  you  ;  I  will  bring  more  shortly.  If  it  be  possi- 
ble, employ  what  I  can  bring,  so  that  when  he  goes  forth 
once  more  to  the  world  he  may  have  a  chance  of  purer 
life, — if  that  can  be." 

"  You  know  him  ?" 

"  I  know  of  him. " 

"And  you  are  his  friend?" 

"No.     His  foe." 

"  His  foe  ?     And  yet ?     Well,  it  shall  be  as  you 

say." 

"I  thank  you.  All  I  desire  is, — never  let  him  learn 
that  it  was  I  who  brought  him  here,  or  that  it  is  I  who 
do  this  thing.  Give  him  no  burden  of  gratitude  save  to 
yourselves." 

Then  he  turned  away,  and  went  on  through  the  night 
once  more. 

They  were  well  used  to  him,  and  asked  him  no  ques- 
tions. 

Since  he  had  saved  this  miserable  life  from  dissolution, 
he  deemed  that  he  had  a  right  to  give  it  one  added  chance 
to  cleanse  itself  from  crime.  But  the  hate  that  he  bore  to 
him  as  his  enemy  was  none  the  less  keen  and  burning, 
because  justice  to  him  as  a  fallen  wretch  outweighed  it. 
"  The  thing  which  I  should  have  done  as  just  to  a  stran- 
ger, must  I  do  as  none  the  less  just  to  my  foe,"  was  the 
principle  which  his  actions  followed.  The  laws  of  men 
were  not  the  laws  of  life.     Yet,  nevertheless,  he  could 


TIIE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY         445 

have  slain  the  Greek  who  lay  yonder  had  he  given  rein 
to  his  passion. 

"And  the  woman  lived  who  could  forsake  Estmere  for 
that  Judas!"  he  mused  as  he  paced  the  gloomy  streets 
backward  to  the  gayer  quarters  of  the  city.  "Truly 
there  are  women  who  turn  to  evil  as  the  swine  to  filth  ; 
and  know  no  more  than  swine  the  pearls  that  lie  beneath 
their  feet  1" 


CHAPTER   XLY. 


In  a  by  street,  in  an  obscure  quarter  of  Paris,  there 
dwelt  an  artist  who  had  suddenly  achieved  fame — so  sud- 
denly that  he  had  had  no  time  to  change  his  abode,  to  meet 
his  new  visitant,  Fortune, — a  guest  who  has  ever  had 
a  carious  habitude  of  changing  the  broken  chairs,  the 
chipped  pipe-trays,  the  lame- legged  table,  the  lumber  and 
the  poverty  of  a  painter's  work-room,  into  costly  couches, 
antique  bronzes,  ebony  cabinets,  eastern  embroideries, 
picturesque  color,  and  luxurious  ease,  but  who  not  unfre- 
quently  turns  out  with  the  old  rubbish,  a  witch-stone  that 
she  found  there,  called  genius.  Critics  and  connoisseurs 
rarely,  however,  detect  its  absence. 

This  artist,  Paul  Lelis,  was  not  young  wrhen  Fortune 
suddenly  bethought  herself  of  him;  and  he  clung  to  his 
witch-stone;  and  he  did  not  care  to  leave  that  old  famil- 
iar oook  high  under  the  roof,  where  he  had  spent  so  many 
bohemian  years — where  he  had  known  what  it  was  to  have 
to  lie  in  bed  all  day  in  winter  to  keep  from  perishing  of 
cohl,  to  have  to  scratch  lilt  le  pictures  for  sweet  in  eat  -ho  xes 
to  -jet  a  mouthful  of  onions  and  bread  ;    to  have  to  face  a 

dish  without  bread,  a  stove  without  warmth,  a  pipe  with- 
oul  smoke,  and  still  to  keep  the  soul  to  create,  alive  and 
annumbed, — where  too  he  had  known  what  it  was  to  love 
and  have  love,  and  see  the  brown  eyes  of  his  mistress 
shine  tenderly,  though  in  a  garret  ;  ami  where,  through 
his  lattice,  he  possessed  so  glorious  a  view  over  the  roofs 

38 


446  TRICOTRTN, 

and  the  spires  and  the  crowns  of  the  trees,  of  the  red  gold 
of  the  sunsets,  and  the  pale  gold  of  the  dawns,  and  all 
the  marvelous,  mystic,  eternal  loveliness  of  the 'ever- 
changing  clouds. 

Lelis  clung  to  his  attic;  being  a  strange  man,  and  a 
man  of  tenacious  attachment,  and  a  man  of  stubborn 
will ;  and  since  the  world  had  taken  the  fancy  to  adore 
him,  he  made  it  toil  wearily  and  pantingly  up  the  hun- 
dred and  twenty-two  stairs  to  his  room.  Lelis  had  tar- 
ried long  enough  in  his  time  on  the  threshold  of  great 
men's  antechambers;  it  was  his  turn  now  to  wait  and 
refuse  to  stir,  and  see  them  labor  up  his  crooked,  unsa- 
vory, oil-lit  stairway.  And  he  would  laugh  grimly,  stand- 
ing at  the  top. 

"I  painted  as  well  twenty  years  ago;  why  did  you 
not  see  it  then  IV  was  all  that  he  said  to  his  patrons. 

Why  did  they  not  ? — and  those  tender  brown  eyes  of 
the  mistress  of  his  youth  had  grown  dim  and  tired,  and 
closed  in  never-ending  slumber,  just  because  they  had 
never  seen  it,  and  there  had  been  no  food  on  the  naked 
shelf. 

The  world  had  come  to  him  at  last,  because  a  great 
man,  chancing  to  fall  on  a  little  study  of  his,  had  recog- 
nized the  worth  in  it,  and  had  groped  his  way  through 
the  darkness  to  the  attic;  and,  being  one  whose  word  was 
powerful,  and  whose  knowledge  of  art  was  undoubted, 
had  in  time  been  followed  to  the  garret  by  the  world. 

Lelis  was  grateful  as  a  dog  to  the  man ;  but  he  was 
cynical  to  the  world. 

"You  are  bitter,  Lelis,"  said  the  personage  who  had 
thus  brought  the  world  to  his  door. 

"No;  I  am  just,"  said  the  artist.  "For  you — you 
had  not  seen  my  pictures  till  you  lit  on  that  little  thing, 
and  came  straight  to  me.  But  Paris — look  you — Paris 
has  seen  them  through  a  score  of  years,  and  would  find 
no  color  in  them,  and  no  form,  because  her  critics  swore 
that  there  were  none.  If  it  be  the  truth  now  that  I  can 
paint,  why  have  they  lied  all  through  these  years  ?  tell 
me  that." 

"Why?  Because  it  is  so  much  easier  to  repeat  a  par- 
rot cry  than  to  use  the  faculties  of  vision  and  judgment: 


THE   STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         44 7 

so  much  easier  to  damn  with  facile  unanimity  than  to 
bend  the  brain  and  the  sight  to  the  patience  of  investiga- 
tion and  appreciation!" 

"That  is  true,  whoever  says  it.  "Who  is  with  you, 
Lelis  ?"  a  voice  called  from  the  doorway. 

Without  awaiting  an  answer  the  new-comer  pushed 
the  atelier  door  open,  and  entered.  On  the  threshold  he 
paused,  'as  though  inclined  to  draw  hack;  hut  the  im- 
pulse was  conquered,  and  he  came  forward  to  where  the 
artist  and  his  patron  stood. 

"It  is  my  Lord  Estmere,"  said  Lelis,  turning  with 
warm  familiar  greeting. 

"So  you  have  brought  Fame  to  Lelis,  my  English 
lord?"  said  Tricotrin,  without  ceremony.  "That  was  a 
good  work  of  yours.  She  is  a  comet  that  has  a  strange 
fancy  only  to  come  forth  like  a  corpse-candle,  and  dance 
over  men's  graves.  It  is  her  way.  When  men  will  have 
her  out  in  the  noon  of  their  youth,  she  kills  them;  ami 
the  painter's  bier  is  set  under  his  Transfiguration,  and 
the  soldier's  body  is  chained  to  the  St.  Helena  rock,  and 
the  poet's  grave  is  made  at  Missolonghi.  It  is  always 
so." 

Estmere  bowed  his  head  in  assent;  he  was  endeavor- 
ing to  remember  where  he  had  once  met  this  stranger 
who  thus  addressed  him— where  he  had  once  heard  these 
mellow,  ringing,  harmonious  accents. 

"Was  it  because  you  were  afraid  of  dying  in  your 
prime,  that  you  would  never  woo  Fame  then  yourself?" 
asked  Lelis,  with  a  smile. 

"Oh-he!"  answered  Tricotrin,  seating  himself  on  a 
deal  box  that  served  ;is  a  table,  and  whereat  he  and  the 
artisl  had  eaten  many  a  meal  of  poasl  chestnuts  and  black 
coffee.  "I  never  wanted  her;  .-he  is  a  weather  vane, 
never  still  two  moments;  .-he  is  a  spaniel  that  quits  the 
Plantagenel  the  momenl  the  battle  goes  againsl  him,  and 
fawns  on  Bolingbroke ;  she  is  an  alchemist's  crucible,  that 
has  every  fair  and  rich  thing  t brown  into  it.  but  will  only 
yield  in  return  the  calcined  stone-  of  chagrin  ami  disap- 
pointment ;  .-he  is  a  harlot,  whose  kisses  are  to  lie  bought, 
and  who  runs  after  those  who  brawl  the  loude.-t  and 
swagger  the  finest  in  the  world's  market-places.     No!    I 


448  TRICOTRIN, 

want  nothing  of  her.  My  lord  here  condemned  her  as  I 
came  in ;  he  said  she  was  the  offspring  of  echoing  par- 
rots, of  imitative  sheep,  of  fawning  hounds.  Who  can 
want  the  creature  of  such  progenitors  ?" 

Estmere  smiled. 

"  I  do  not  think  that  I  said  anything  of  the  kind.  You 
accredit  me  with  your  own  ironies." 

"  Did  you  not  ?  Well — it  was  the  deduction  from  your 
words,  at  any  rate.     How  fares  my  Dante?" 

"The  Dante!"  echoed  Estmere  in  surprise,  and  with 
sudden  remembrance.  "Ah!  I  surely  remember  now;  it 
was  you  who  made  me  the  fortunate  possessor  of  that 
rare  specimen  of  Attavante  ?" 

"A  very  polite  phrase  ;  it  was  your  own  gold  that 
made  you  the  possessor  of  it.  Yes;  I  sold  it  to  you.  I 
wonder  you  recollect  it ;  but  great  men  have  clearer 
memories,  I  believe,  than  little  busy-bodies.  The  book 
lives  still  ?" 

"Certainly;  in  my  library  atVilliers." 

"He  sold  his  Dante?"  asked  Lelis.  "He  and  I  have 
known  what  hunger  and  cold  mean,  both  of  us.  The 
kingdom  of  Bohemia  has  other  sides  to  it  than  the  side 
that  humorists  sketch,  and  that  poets  portray.  The 
dance,  the  song,  the  laugh;  the  holiday  in  the  woods, 
waltz  in  the  cabaret,  the  romp  in  the  orchard, — it  has 
them  indeed ;  but  then  no  less  has  it  also  the  tireless 
stove,  the  soupless  platter,  the  winter  nights  of  starva- 
tion, the  dull  stupid  misery  staring  out  of  a  garret  win- 
dow to  watch  the  lights  being  lit  in  the  palace  over  the 


river." 


"Bagatelle!"  cried  Tricotrin,  "if  we  are  true  bohe- 
mians  we  stamp  our  feet  in  the  snow  till  we  are  warm, 
we  read  Rabelais  till  we  forget  to  be  hungry,  and  we  look 
up  at  the  winter  planets,  and  think  how  pale  they  make 
the  palace  gas  look.  Bah,  Lelis! — has  fame  already 
turned  you  renegade  ?" 

"If  Bohemia  do  indeed  make  such  philosophers  of  its 
subjects,  it  must  have  been  as  deeply  wronged  by  the 
world's  construction  as  the  Epicurean  doctrines !"  said 
Estmere,    with  that  mixture  of  contempt  and  wonder,. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         449 

which  a  man  of  his  character  and  of  bis  order  feels  for 
the  disciples  of  the  religion  of  "rire,  et  ne  rien  faire." 

"Nay,"  said  Tricotrin,  "I  will  not  profess  for  it  as  Lu- 
cretius  does  of  Epicureanism,  that  in  reality  it  consists  of 
renunciation.  But  I  believe,  on  the  whole,  its  followers 
bear  deprivation  better  than  most  followers  of  other 
deities, — which  may  be  the  second  best  thing  perhaps. 
But  you  can  know  and  tell  nothing  of  it,  Lord  Estmere ; 
it  is  a  world  you  have  never  entered  1" 

"I  can  endure  my  exclusion  1" 

"  I  will  warrant  you  can  ;  but,  nevertheless,  if  you  had 
entered  once  in  awhile,  you  might  have  learned  a  few 
things  useful  perhaps;  and  you  might  have  unlearned  the 
only  thing  that  mars  your  character  and  your  career,  to 
my  fancy." 

"You  do  my  character  and  my  career  much  honor  by 
making  them  the  objects  of  your  study." 

Tricotrin  smiled:  the  sarcasm  did  not  sting  him. 

"I  study  most  things,  after  my  own  fashion,"  he  said, 
carelessly.  "Though,  to  be  sure,  an  English  Eupatrid 
like  you  is  a  little  too  cold  and  costly  a  crystal,  may  be, 
and  comes  from  too  high  a  glacier  to  lit  well  into  a  bohe- 
mian's  microscope.  And.  in  truth,  I  like  you  better  for 
your  loyalty  to  your  Order;  it  becomes  you.  The  Opt i- 
mate  flattering  the  Populares,  because  he  fears  the  deluge, 
is  the  most  pitiable  spectacle  that  the  world  holds.  I  like 
your  exclusivism  better." 

"  I  am  happy  to  merit  and  receive  your  approbation  1" 
said  Estmere,  with  his  delicate  < tempt. 

"You  think  a  bohemian  should  not  even  venture  to 
praise  a  Btatesman?"  laughed  Tricotrin.  "Oh,  I  know 
tin!  temper  of  yours  so  well ; — it  just  does  what  it  sees 
lit  and  deema  becoming  its  royalty;  and  cares  not  two 
straws  whether  1  he  nations  shoul  exultation  or  execration 
after  its  acts.  You  would  go  to  the  guillotine  as  yon 
would  receive  your  country's  stars  ami  crosses, — with 
jii-i  the  same  indifference,  with  jusl  the  same  conviction 
thai  neither  decapitation  nor  decoration  could  add  any- 
thing to,  or  take  anything  from,  your  dignity!" 

Estmere  glanced  at  him  with  some  wonder,  and  with 

38* 


450  TRICOTRIN, 

more  distaste  ;  and,  without  reply,  turned  t®  examine 
some  sketches  that  leaned  against  the  wall. 

Among  them  was  a  little  pine  wood  panel,  on  which 
was  painted  the  head  of  a  child  of  some  fourteen  years, 
with  a  red  hood  half  over  her  curls,  and  her  eyes  gazing 
out,  as  if  into  the  future,  half  smiling,  half  awed,  with 
eagerness,  with  rapture,  and  with  a  tinge  of  fear. 

"  That  is  very  lovely,"  he  said,  as  he  turned  it  to  the 
light.     "  It  is  yours,  Lelis,  of  course  ?" 

"  The  thing  belongs  to  me,"  interrupted  Tricotrin, 
quickly.     "And  it  is  not  for  sale." 

"  Perhaps  you  can  oblige  me  with  the  name  of  the  ar- 
tist ?" 

"  No  I     He  wants  no  patronage." 

The  answer  was  curt  and  ungracious.  Estmere  laid 
the  panel  down  as  he  heard. 

"  Whoever  painted  it  must  have  genius." 

"  Genius  !"  interrupted  Tricotrin.  "Pooh!  What  is 
genius  ?  Only  the  power  to  see  a  little  deeper  and  a  little 
clearer  than  most  other  people.     That  is  all." 

"  The  power  of  vision  ?  Of  course.  But  that  renders 
it  none  the  less  rare." 

"Oh,  yes,  it  is  rare — rare  like  kingfishers,  and  sand- 
pipers, and  herons,  and  black  eagles.  And  so  men  al- 
ways shoot  it  down,  as  they  do  the  birds,  and  stick  up 
the  dead  body  in  glass  cases,  and  label  it,  and  stare  at  it, 
and  bemoan  it  as  '  so  singular,'  having  done  their  best  to 
insure  its  extinction  I" 

Estmere  looked  keenly  at  him. 

"  Surely  genius  that  secretes  itself  as  your  friend's 
must  do,"  he  said,  touching  the  panel  afresh,  "commits 
suicide,  and  desires  its  own  extinction  ?" 

"Pshaw  !"  said  Tricotrin,  impatiently,  and  with  none  of 
his  habitual  courtesy.  "  You  think  the  kingfisher  and  the 
black  eagle  have  no  better  thing  to  live  for  than  to  become 
the  decorations  of  a  great  personage's  glass  cabinets  ? 
You  think  genius  can  find  no  higher  end  than  to  furnish 
frescoes  and  panelings  for  a  nobleman's  halls  and  ante- 
chambers ?  You  mistake  very  much  ;  the  mistake  is  a 
general  one  in  your  Order.  But  believe  me,  the  king- 
fisher enjoys  his  brown  moorland  stream,  and  his  tufts  of 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         45 1 

green  rushes,  and  his  water-swept  bough  of  hawthorn  ; 
the  eagle  enjoys  his  wild  rocks,  and  his  sweep  through 
the  air,  and  his  steady  gaze  at  the  sun  that  blinds  all  hu- 
man eves ; — and  neither  ever  imagine  that  the  great  men 
below  pity  them  because  they  are  not  stuffed,  and  labeled, 
and  praised  by  rule  in  their  palaces  !  And  genius  is  much 
of  the  birds'  fashion  of  thinking.  It  lives  its  own  life ! 
and  is  not,  as  you  connoisseurs  are  given  to  fancy, 
wretched  unless  you  see  fit  in  your  graciousness  to  deem 
it  worth  the  glass-case  of  your  criticism,  and  the  straw- 
stuffing  of  your  gold.  For  it  knows,  as  kingfisher  and 
eagle  know  also,  that  stuffed  birds  nevermore  use  their 
wings,  and  are  evermore  subject  to  be  bought  and  be 
sold." 

An  answering  sarcasm  rose  to  Estmere's  lips — he  had 
seen  the  vultures  of  genius,  deeming  themselves  eagles, 
ofttimes  so  ravenous  for  his  gold! — but  he  checked  it, 
for  he  remembered  that  both  these  men  were  poor,  that 
neither  was  his  equal.  lie  laid  aside  the  panel  once 
more  in  silence,  and,  with  a  farewell  to  the  painter  Lelis 
and  a  bend  of  his  head  to  the  stranger,  passed  from  the 
room. 

"You  were  surely  rude  to  him,  Tricotrin,"  said  the 
artist,  as  the  door  closed. 

"  I  might  be  so." 

"  lint  why  should  you  be  so  ?  He  is  a  man  whom  one 
can  honor  with  sincerity  ;  he  is  generous  without  osten- 
tation, full  of  infinite  thought  for  others,  and  has  the  ten- 
derness of  a  lover,  not  the  condescension  of  a  patron,  for 
all  Art." 

"  I  do  not  dispute  his  high  qualil  ies  ;  but  he  is  safe  to 
lie  surfeited  with  sycophants,  a  rough  word  can  do  him 
no  harm.  As  Car  a-  I  know  aught  of  him,  he  prefers  an 
acid  truth  to  a  sugared  lie." 

"  lint  why  V70uld  you  qo1  let  him  learn  thai  you  painted 
that    little  Stud}    '."' 

"To  what  use?  1  once  Mild  him  a  book.  He  would 
never  have  understood  that  1  would  not  .-ell  him  a  pic- 
ture. .Moreover — you  know  well  enough  I  am  a  king- 
fisher, and  1  like  m\  brook  to  lie  quiet.  It'  m\  lord  there 
once  took  it  into  his  fancy  to  point  me  out  to  his  world. 


452  TRICOTRIN, 

my  brook  would  be  forever  muddy  with  the  feet  of 
gazers,  and  forever  choked  up  with  the  purses  they 
would  fling  at  me.  Art  is  my  tuft  of  rushes,  my  wild 
hawthorn  bough,  that  lend  me  shade  and  sweetness.  I 
do  not  want  to  be  asked  to  vend  them  at  so  much  a  blade, 
at  so  much  a  blossom  !" 

And  he  threw  a  cloth  over  the  panel,  and  put  it  under 
his  arm,  and  crossed  over  to  the  easel. 

Lelis  said  no  more.  He  knew  the  temper  of  his  friend  ; 
and  he  did  not  know  that  any  memory  endeared  this  lit- 
tle portrait  of  the  child  in  her  scarlet  hood.  He  had 
been  away  in  Egypt  at  the  autumn  season  when  the 
bright  eyes  of  the  Waif  had  first  gazed  upon  Paris  ;  and 
of  her  Tricotrin  never  spoke. 

Estmere  meantime  went  out  to  where  his  horse  waited, 
and  passed  on  to  pursue  his  visits  to  various  houses 
where  painters,  obscure,  poor,  some  young,  some  old,  but 
all  unable  to  seize  the  world  in  that  mood  which  gives 
fame  to  those  who  know  how  to  strike  the  hot  iron  aright, 
lived  in  that  misery  of  the  physical  life,  and  that  su- 
premacy of  the  mental  life,  which  are  at  once  the  curse 
and  the  blessing  of  such  men's  existence. 

Estmere  was  well  known  to  the  whole  art-world  for 
the  patience  with  which  he  would  seek  out  buried  talents ; 
for  the  delicacy  and  discrimination  which  tempered  in 
him  the  connoisseur's  ofttimes  too  pitiless  science ;  for 
the  munificence  and  graceful  generosity  wherewith  his 
gifts  and  his  aids  were  invariably  given.  Though  cold, 
contemptuous,  negligent,  and  keen  of  satire,  with  his 
equals,  to  men  of  genius  who  lived  in  poverty  he  was 
ever  gentle,  cordial,  tolerant  of  all  prejudice,  and  skilled 
at  rendering  his  assistance  in  such  fashion  that  he  never 
made  them  conscious  of  their  debt. 

Some  time  elapsed  in  the  visits  that  he  paid;  it  was 
much  later  in  the  day  when  he  rode  through  the  quarter 
on  his  homeward  way.  In  one  of  its  tortuous  streets  his 
farther  passage  was  blocked  by  a  throng  of  people  who 
had  poured  out  from  the  wineshops,  the  masons'  yards, 
the  miserable  houses  near,  and  congregated  in  one  nar- 
row way  before  a  stone-worker's  little  court,  which  in  its 
turn  was  filled  by  a  dense,  close-packed,  screaming  mob. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         453 

It  was  the  fashion  to  flock  to  Lelis,  who  was  at  that 
moment  the  chief  theme  of  Paris;  and  two  or  three 
equipages  were  arrested,  like  himself,  by  this  frantic  and 
tumultuous  crowd,  against  which  outriders  and  equerries 
vainly  thrust  their  animals,  and  lifted  their  whips. 

"What  is  it?"  he  asked :  his  servants  answered  him 
that  it  was  a  mere  nothing: — a  rope  had  given  way  in  a 
well  which  they  were  clearing,  and  had  precipitated  a 
workman  seventy  feet  into  the  choke-damp  and  water: — 
that  was  all:  the  populace  was  always  so  excitable,  so 
noisy  about  nothing.  That  their  lord  should  be  delayed, 
merely  because  a  stone-mason  was  drowning  in  a  dead 
well,  was  intolerable,  was  ridiculous. 

"  It  is  you  who  make  revolutions!"  thought  Estmere, 
as  he  heard  his  attendants'  mockery  of  their  own  class, 
and  strove  in  vain  to  force  his  horse  against  the  press. 
There  was  a  louder  cry  going  up  from  the  throats  of  the 
street  crowd:  in  its  uproar  he  could  hear  the  words — 
"Tricot rin  I" 

"Who  is  it  that  is  hurt?"  he  asked  of  an  art  student 
nearest  him:  the  lad  replied  readily: 

"  The  stone-mason  has  fallen — of  course:  but  it  is  Tri- 
cotrin  who  is  gone  down  to  save  him;  it  is  Tricotrin  we 
are  anxious  about." 

"  He  will  find  but  a  corpse;  and  he  will  never  come  up 
alive  himself!'  cried  a  black-browed  woman  of  the  fish- 
marts:  her  dark,  hard,  coarse  features  working  with 
Btrong  emotion.  "1  know  what  that  well  is: — my  father 
was  killed  there  thirty  years  ago.     It  is  full  of  poison." 

"They  wanted  to  lower  a  dog  down  to  see  if  the  beast 
could  live  in  the  air!"  cried  the  shrill  piping  voice  of  a 
linker's  boy.  "But  Tricotrin  would  not  have  it  so;  he 
said  we  had  no  business  to  imperil  a  poor  brute  that 
could  not  Bpeak  for  itself;  he  called  it  cowardly  to  put  a 
cur  in  a  place  we  were  afraid  of  ourselves  1" 

"  Silence,  silence  1"  shouted  a  score  of  voices.  "  Wc 
cannol  hear  what  they  are  Baying  in  the  yardl" 

What  they  were  saying  in  the  yard, — in  broken  tem- 
pestuous outcries, — was  that  they  hail  left  fifty  yards  of 
cord  out  over  the  windlass,  and  both  men  were  still  at 
the  bottom. 


454  TRICOTRIN, 

"Is  he  dead?"  shrieked  the  mob  outside,  in  a  frantic 
paroxysm  of  terror. 

"  Is  he  dead  ?"  echoed  a  woman's  voice,  with  a  thrill 
in  it  that  froze  the  hearts  of  every  hearer  of  it.  Estmere, 
absorbed,  like  the  people,  in  listening  for  the  answer  from 
the  little  courtway  and  in  watching  the  violent  gesticula- 
tions and  useless  movements  of  the  throng  within  it, 
started  and  turned  his  head.  At  his  side  stood  an  open 
equipage,  glittering  in  all  the  panoply  of  rank  ;  in  it  its 
owner  had  risen,  and  the  haughty  beauty  of  her  face  was 
rigid  and  colorless  and  strained  with  horror.  He  rec- 
ognized the  face  of  the  Duchess  de  Lira. 

"  She  has  a  soul  in  her, — for  she  has  pity,"  he  thought, 
touched  by  that  terror  on  a  countenance  commonly  so 
dazzling  and  so  chill — a  terror  for  the  physical  hazard  of 
an  unknown  man,  for  the  beating  hearts  of  a  plebeian 
crowd,  for  simple  tragedies  of  daily  life,  as  he  believed  it. 

At  that  moment  a  loud  moan  came  from  the  throng 
within  the  little  court. 

"  Do  ye  hear?"  cried  the  fishwoman,  mad  with  emo- 
tion, and  struggling  upward  till  she  had  set  her  bare  feet 
upon  the  motionless  carriage-wheel  in  such  fashion  as 
gave  her  nearer  sight.  "  That  was  how  they  moaned 
when  they  dragged  my  father  up  dead!  Hark  what  they 
say, — all  the  rope  is  run  out,  and  it  is  as  dark  as  pitch  in 
the  pit, — the  choke-damp  has  killed  the  light  that  he 
carried !" 

The  cry  shuddered  through  the  people. 

The  light  was  out !     Was  all  hope  over  ? 

The  slender  fair  hand  of  the  patrician  woman  clinched 
the  brown,  brawny  arm  of  the  fishgirl  in  an  unconscious 
gesture  :  in  the  instinctive  sympathy  of  the  same  fear, 
the  same  love,  the  same  anguish. 

An  awful  hush  fell  upon  the  crowd, — alone,  and  raised 
above  the  others,  the  two  women  stood  side  by  side,  with 
scarcely  one  touch  of  common  sex  or  common  humanity 
betwixt  them  in  their  vast  divergence,  yet  made  as  one 
in  that  brief  moment  by  the  unison  of  dread,  by  the  lev- 
eler  of  grief. 

Then  from  the  press  within  the  yard  a  shout  of  wild 
joy  echoed :  joy  hysterical,   triumphant,    adoring.     The 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAT.  455 

rope  had  curled  a  hundred  times  back  again  over  the 
windlass ;  they  had  drawn  him  upward  to  the  fairness  of 
the  day;  he  was  living, — he  was  unhurt, — he  had  spoken 
to  them, — his  light  was  out  indeed,  but  it  had  only  fallen 
in  the  water,  because  he  had  loosed  his  hold  on  it  to  seize 
the  lost  man's  body,  and  bear  it  up  to  the  living  world. 
He  was  safe ! — and  even  the  mason  whom  he  had  rescued 
might  still  live  also.  The  crowd  went  mad  with  ecstasy, 
and  all  the  infectious  strength  of  heroism  ;  as  it  had  gone 
mad  a  moment  earlier  with  pity  and  with  fear. 

Thus  ardently  will  the  high  daring  of  one  man  wrork  on, 
and  fuse,  and  melt,  and  set  alight  tha sluggish,  apathetic, 
selfish  mass  of  human  lives. 

The  aristocrat  in  her  carriage  sank  silently  downward 
among  her  cushions,  her  face  was  white  to  the  lips;  and 
she  trembled  violently. 

The  fish  woman  flushed  a  deep  red  over  her  tawny 
skin,  and  muttered  a  curse  in  the  jargon  of  her  tirade,  and 
bent  over  her  creel  that  had  got  shaken  and  half  emptied 
in  the  crush* 

Estmere  had  never  withdrawn  his  gaze  from  the  face 
of  the  woman  whom  he  had  condemned  as  so  cold  an 
egotist,  so  heartless  a  coquette;  and  whom  he  now  lie- 
held  thus  moved  by  what  he  deemed  were  sympathy  and 
compassion  for  unknown  and  imperiled  lives.  Some 
wonder  touched  him  at  the  strength  of  the  emotion  that 
he  saw  in  her :  but  it  was  outweighed  by  the  attraction 
which  tin-  pain,  and  pity,  and  infinite  fear,  softening  thai 
dazzling  countenance,  possessed  for  him;  imagining 
t In  in  as  he  did  to  be  horn  from  that  mere  human  sorrow 
for  human  suffering'  which  erentle-natured  women  feel  for 
the  calamity  of  a  stranger,  for  the  pang  of  the  lowest 
creature  upon  earth.  He  Went  to  her,  and  addressed  her 
with  a  more  tender  accenl  in  his  voice  than  she  had  ever 
heard:  >\^  started  as  his  word.-  fell  on  her  ear,  and 
answered  him  hurriedly, — 

"111?  No,  1  ail  nothing.  I  thank  you  much.  This 
sceue  has  shockedme:  thai  is  all.  Can  you  learn  for 
me, — how  it  is  really  with  him? " 

'•  With  the  man  who  fell  ?" 

"No!      With  the  man   who  saved   him!      Is   heroism 


456  TRICOTRIN, 

so  common  in  this  self-absorbed  and  brutalized  age  of 
ours  that  we  shall  do  it  no  homage,  show  it  no  interest  ?" 

"  I  honor  it  as  greatly  as  .you  can  do,"  he  answered 
her  gently,  and  with  some  surprise.  "  I  will  go  at  once, 
and  see  him  myself,  if  possible." 

He  went,  and  as  quickly  as  he  could,  having  dis- 
mounted, forced  his  way  into  the  court.  She  sat  breath- 
less and  motionless  ;  her  mouth  was  parched,  her  brain 
throbbed,  her  limbs  quivered, — in  that  hour  all  the  long- 
buried,  long-forgotten  memories  of  her  childhood,  and  all 
the  love  she  had  once  borne  the  savior  of  her  life,  awoke 
in  passionate  remorse.  She  was  so  base,  so  low,  so  cow- 
ardly in  her  own  sight : — these  people,  these  creatures  of 
the  cellar,  and  the  wineshop,  and  the  fish-mart,  and  the 
timber-yard  were  true  to  him,  were  loyal  to  him,  dared 
show  their  fealty  to  him  and  their  fears  for  him.  But 
she! — she  who  scorned  dastards,  and  loathed  liars  with 
all  the  force  of  a  proud  and  fearless  temper,  sat  silent,  and 
motionless,  and  stirred  not  to  welcome  him  from  out  the 
jaws  of  death!  (  t. 

The  fishwoman,  shouldering  afresh  her  huge  creel, 
looked  curiously  at  this  "  aristocrat,"  who  had  been  joined 
with  her  for  one  instant  in  the  communion  of  terror. 

"  She  must  care  for  him, — in  some  fashion,"  she  mused. 
"  Her  great  eyes  looked  all  blind  and  mad.  They  say 
these  cold,  dainty  things  in  their  palaces,  sometimes, — 
well !  she  is  the  first  of  them  I  have  not  hated." 

The  subject  of  her  thoughts,  with  a  sudden  impulse, 
leant  to  her  with  a  score  of  gold  pieces  in  her  hand. 

"  Your  merchandise  is  half  lost,"  she  said  hurriedly. 
"  Let  me  put  these  in  your  basket  in  their  stead." 

The  fishwoman  fastened  her  black  ruthless  eyes  on 
her  as  the  eyes  of  her  ancestress  might  have  fastened  on 
the  white,  haughty  loveliness  of  Marie  Antoinette. 

"  I  have  not  earned  your  money.  I  do  not  want  it," 
she  said,  curtly.  "  But  I  like  you,  though  you  are  one  of 
them; — you  care  for  Tricotrin." 

She  shouldered  her  creel  and  went. 

The  Duchess  de  Lira  leaned  back  in  her  carriage  very 
pale   still,  and  with  a  quiver  in  her   curling,  haughty 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         457 

mouth.  The  words  struck  to  her  heart  like  a  blow  of 
steel. 

"That  woman  is  nobler  than  I!"  she  thought,  bitterly. 
"  She  is  not  ashamed  of  what  she  feels  for  him, — she  can 
dare  to  have  sincerity!" 

Estmere  returning,  approached  her  again  through  the 
swiftly-dispersing  crowd. 

"  You  have  seen  him  ?"  she  asked,  feverishly,  with  a 
curious  apprehension  of  what  evil  she  scarcely  could  have 
told. 

"  No :  I  regret  to  say  I  found  it  impossible  to  obey 
your  wishes  and  my  own,"  he  answered  her.  "  This 
hero  of  the  populace  must  be  of  a  strange  temper,  and  of 
a  very  noble  one.  lie  was  no  sooner  safe  above  ground, 
they  say,  than  he  dived  into  a  house,  and  disappeared 
through  its  back  ways  into  some  adjoining  lane,  to  escape 
the  eulogy  and  the  adoration  of  the  people.  The  mason 
whom  he  went  down  to  save  is  breathing  and  can  speak; 
there  is  no  doubt  of  his  recovery.  It  was  a  noble  rescue : 
I  regret  more  than  I  can  say,  not  to  have  been  in  time  to 
arresl  the  actor  in  it." 

"If  he  be  gone  so  swiftly  he  can  have  no  hurt?"  she 
asked  with  a  deep  quick  breath. 

"  None.  It  seems  that  he  is  of  a  singular  strength  and 
agility:  such  men  escape  where  weaklings  or  fools  would 
perish.  And  now,  shall  we  move  from  this  throng? 
Where  is  it  that  you  desire  to  go?" 

She  endeavored  to  smile  as  she  answered  him  : 

"I  was  about  to  visit  your  wonderful  Lelis.  But  the 
noise  of  this  crowd  has  made  me  disinclined  for  any- 
thing save  quietude.  I  will  return  to  my  hotel,  if  you 
please." 

lie  assented,  and  rode  beside  her  carriage  through  the 
long  and  various  roads  that  led  from  that  poor  and  ob- 
scure neighborhood  to  her  gates. 

The  color  was  still  blanched  from  her  face,  and  she  was 
both  graver  and  gentler  than  her  wont;  hut  to  him  she 
had  never  been  so  Beducl  i\  e. 

"She  has  feeling  in  her.  I  did  her  wrong,"  he  mused; 
and  his  najturc  was  one  which  ever  led  him,  in  view  of  an 

39 


458  TRICOTRIN, 

injustice  done,  to  make  even  too  full  and  too  generous  an 
amends. 

As  he  left  her  at  her  own  residence,  and  went  home- 
ward himself,  his  thoughts  lingered  over  the  scene  which 
had  touched  her  thus  deeply. 

"  Tricotrin  ? — Tricotrin?"  he  murmured.  "  Tricotrin  ? 
I  have  heard  that  word  somewhere.  Surely  it  is  the 
name  or  the  pseudonym  of  that  man  whom  I  spoke  with 
to-day  ;  of  that  man  who  once  sold  me  my  Dante  ?" 

And  he  felt  a  certain  regret  jffor,  toward  the  hero  who 
had  gone  down  into  the  foul  air  and  poisonous  perils  of 
the  well  in  the  stone-yard,  he  felt  the  attraction  of  one 
courageous  temper  to  another  ;  but  toward  the  bohemian 
who  had  treated  him  with  such  unceremonious  familiarity 
on  that  morning,  he  felt  the  aversion  of  a  haughty  and 
exclusive  Order  for  a  class  in  which  all  that  it  deems 
most  perilous  and  most  lawless  are  embodied. 

"  They  are  strange  men — these  Ishmaels  of  social  life," 
he  thought.  "  They  will  plunge  into  all  the  chances  of  a 
horrible  death  to  rescue  some  fellow-creature  from  a  tomb, 
or  share  it  with  him  if  his  delivery  be  impossible  ;  and 
yet  they  will  beguile,  and  lead,  and  drag,  and  goad  hun- 
dreds of  those  poor,  ignorant,  blind  wild-beasts  of  the 
populace  to  be  mowed  down  at  barricades  and  in  street 
riots,  on  the  mere  impulse  of  a  rabid  hatred  of  Class,  on 
the  mere  chimera  of  that  '  Universal  Equality'  which 
every  law  of  nature  and  of  science  proves  an  impossibility 
— a  monstrosity  that  would  be  found  utterly  untenable  if 
it  ever  could  even  be  reached  and  essayed!" 

As  he  thus  mused  of  a  theme  so  different,  there  drifted 
back  into  his  thoughts,  by  some  untraceable  connection, 
the  memory  of  the  little  portrait  he  had  seen  of  the  child 
in  the  scarlet  hood. 

He  recollected  what  fugitive  intangible  likeness  it  had 
been  which  had  attracted  him  in  the  golden,  bright, 
tender-hued  picture — it  was  a  likeness  to  the  woman  from 
whom  he  had  that  hour  parted. 

Though  the  face  of  a  gipsy  child,  yet  surely  it  had  a 
look  like  this  scornful  court  beauty,  this  omnipotent 
Duchess  de  Lira 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  459 

"That  man  must  have,  himself,  been  the  artist,"  mused 
Estmere.     "  J  will  ask  Lelis  of  him." 

Cut  when  he  asked  Lelis  he  found  that  the  painter 
could  tell  him  bu1  little. 

"  Tricotrin  ?"  said  Lelis,  "  Tricotrin  ?  Yes :  it  is  surely 
his  name,  my  Lord  Estmere.  And  why  should  it  nol  be? 
We  have  odd  names  among-  us;  odder  than  that.  Of 
Tricotrin  I  know  nothing:  except  the  one  thing — that  I 
have  loved  him  for  far  over  twenty  years.  We  are  not 
given  to  the  asking  of  credentials,  to  the  taking  of  pass- 
portoS;  we  ofBohemia.  Be  may  spring  from  sovereigns; 
he  may  come  from  cobblers;  1  cannot  tell  you.  Of  a 
surety  I  never  asked  him. 

"  We  mei  firsl  of  all  at  a  Wirthaus  in  Bavaria.  1  forget 
where  exactly  ;  but  in  one  of  those  pretty  quaint  villages 
toward  the  Tyrol.  There  was  a  big  brawny  man  \ 
a  box  of  fantoccini,  and  there  was  a  slender  dark  girl, 
with  a  tambourine,  whose  duly  it  was  to  play  while  the 
puppets  danced.  There  was  a  little  black  monkey,  starved, 
frightened,  miserable;  ordered  to  dance  also,  and  shiver- 
ing and  moaning  piteously,  instead  of  dancing 

"  The  bigman  thrashed  the  little  monkey  till  il  shrieked; 
the  girl  wept,  and  then  the  man  heat  her.  Tricotrin  and 
1  were  sitting  in  the  wooden  gallery  over  the  door,  taking 
our  wine.  Be  saw  all  this,  and  down  he  leapt  from  tin; 
porch,  right  over  the  rails  and  the  vine;  got  the  stick 
from  the  man,  and  collared  him,  and  belabored  him  till 
he  swore  and  screamed  as  onh  a  Roman  could  do.  Then 
he  Hung  the  wretch  into  the  river;  a  brawling,  foaming, 
shallow  stream,  that  wetted  him  to  the  skin.  Then  he 
lifted  the  monkey  up  in  his  arms,  caressed  it,  talked  to  it. 
took  off  its  little  dress,  and  came  up  again  t>>  the  gallery, 
and  .-at  down  lo  his  walnuts  and  wine. 

''The  Roman  made  a  horrible  outcry  below ;  Tricotrin 
looked  over  the  wooden  rail  and  threw  him  a  doubloon. 

"•  Brute,1  aid  lie.  '  1  will  come  down  and  give  you 
another  beating,  il'  you  desire  it;  also  another  ducking, 
with  readiness.  Hut  have  your  monkey  again  you  never 
will.  There  is  its  value  as  a  marketable  thing;  of  any 
other  value  you  know  naught  •  II'  you  have  wisdom  you 
will  betake  yourself  to  some  other  hostelry.' 


4G0  TRICOTRIN, 

"  The  man  slunk  off,  pocketing  his  doubloon,  and  Trico- 
trin  kept  his  monkey.  That  is  how  I  came  to  know  him 
first.  I  thought  that  scene  better  warranty  of  his  char- 
acter than  a  banker's  certificate.  But  then  we  bohemians 
have  queer  notions." 


CHAPTER  XLVI. 

The  stone-mason,  lying  in  the  narrow  hospital  bed, 
with  broken  limbs  and  bruised  body,  unhappy  in  his 
thoughts,  and  fast  fretting  himself  to  fever  over  the 
coming  destitution  of  his  wife  and  children  through  the 
many  weeks  wherein  he  would  be  unfit  for  labor,  was 
made  happy  by  news  which  came  to  him.  News  that  a 
great  lady,  who  had  chanced  to  witness  the  accident  from 
her  carriage,  had  sent  her  people  to  say  that  she  would 
charge  herself  with  all  the  needs  of  his  family  during 
such  time  as  he  should  be  incapable  of  labor,  and  after 
also  if  they  needed  it. 

The  man  was  a  tough  republican,  a  communist  to  the 
core,  one  who  had  been  in  troubles  of  the  barricades,  and 
who  had  tasted  prison  fare  more  than  once  for  the  too 
trunk  and  sturdy  utterance  of  his  opinions  over  the  black 
coffee  and  the  domino-table  of  his  evening  haunt.  But 
he  swore  a  great  oath,  with  the  tears  falling  like  rain  down 
his  cheeks,  and  muttered  : 

"I  will  never  say  one  word  against  the  aristocrats 
again  1  They  will  have  bread,  do  you  hear?  my  little 
ones  will  have  bread!" 

For  the  great  revolutionist  of  Hunger,  who  preaches 
with  a  force  so  frightful  and  an  illogical  eloquence  that 
the  dullest  can  comprehend,  had  been  his  chief  political 
teacher :  and  had  bade  him  take  a  pike  because  he  could 
not  lay  his  hand  on  a  loaf. 

The  servants  of  Estmere,  sent  to  inquire  what  could  be 
done  for  the  family  of  this  injured  workman,  brought  him 
word  that  they  had  been  forestalled  by  a  few  minutes 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  4fil 

only;  all  that  the  poor  people  wanted  would  be  supplied  to 
them  by  the  Duchess  de  Lira — a  support  much  needed,  for 
the  wife  was  infirm  of  health,  and  lame,  and  there  were 
more  children  than  generally  crowd  around  a  French  labor- 
er's table,  to  share  its  sour  bread  and  meager  onion  soup. 

"She  must  have  a  noble  temper  ;  I  may  have  done  her 
wrong,"  he  thought  once  again. 

Was  it  possible  that  behind  this  woman's  dazzling  ex- 
travagance, and  egotism,  and  vanities,  and  vagaries,  and 
semblance  of  utter  heedlessness  and  heartlessness,  there 
were  hidden  such  gracious  and  generous  things  of  mercy, 
and  of  pity  as  was  this? 

It  seemed  only  just  to  think  so.  lie  was  willing  to 
believe  i\  ;  he  did  believe.  And  a  danger  that  had  never 
been  in  her  before  for  him,  gave  her  peril  for  him  now. 

She  might  be  callous  only  because  none  had  known 
how  to  awaken  her  heart.  She  had  been  wedded  so 
young  to  an  unloved  lord:  (his  in  itself  was  so  dire  a 
temptation.  She  was  flattered  by  fools,  who  weakened 
her  reason,  while  i  hey  heated  and  si  rengthened  her  errors 
and  her  foibles.  She  was  surrounded  by  an  atmosphere 
so  artificial,  by  a  homage  so  deteriorating,  by  influences 
so  dangerous  both  morally  and  mentally. 

There  was  so  much  excuse  for  her  faults  and  follies, 
for  her  cruelties  and  egotisms;  who  could  tell  how  fair 
and  sweet  a  nature  might  not  wake  into  life,  if — she 
loved  ? 

So  he  mused,  with  fanciful  conjectures;  fancies  wholly 
unlike  his  grave,  sarcastic,  and  skeptical  intelligence,  but 
characteristic  of  every  man  attracted  by  a  woman,  whose 
sorceries  charm  him  while  his  reason  condemns  her. 

He  commenced  a  study  thai  was  the  mosl  hazardous 
tribute  to  her  power  he  could  haw  rendered;  he  com- 
menced the  study  of  her  temperament,  of  her  action 
her  heart.  Oftentimes  when  she  resented  the  neglect  he 
was  guilty  of  toward  her.  the  silence  he  preserved  in  her 
presence,  the  indifference  with  which  he  remained  apart 
while  others  crowded  around  her,  .-he.  and  she  alone,  oc- 
cupied his  thoughts  that  were  intenl  on  analyzing  her 
ironies,  scanning  her  coquetries,  ami  weighing  the  chaj 
ful  indices  of  her  anomalous  vagaries. 

3!)* 


402  TRICOTRIN, 

He  saw  much  that  repelled,  much  that  offended,  much 
that  alienated  him,  in  her:  but  he  also  saw  much  that 
irresistibly  beguiled  him,  and  much  that  seemed  to  him 
to  tell  of  a  dormant  soul,  which  only  slumbered  because 
none  had  known' aright  how  to  stir  it  from  its  indolent 
sleep. 

"There  should  be  a  fine  nature  there;  with  such  eyes 
as  those  no  woman,  surely,  can  be  soulless,"  he  mused, 
as  he  glanced  at  her  one  night,  at  one  of  the  many  houses 
where  they  were  in  the  habitude  of  meeting. 

"Of  what  were  you  thinking,  Lord  Estmere,  when 
you  looked  at  me  so  keenly  an  hour  ago  ?"  she  asked  of 
him,  later  on,  when  he  took  for  a  moment  a  seat  beside 
her. 

"It  would  be  to  risk  your  anger  to  answer  frankly." 

"And  any  other  than  a  frank  reply  you  would  not  give? 
Of  how  few  of  the  men  that  I  know  could  I  say  the  same ! 
Well, — answer  me  candidly  then:  hazard  my  anger." 

He  leaned  slightly  nearer  to  her :  a  cantata  that  was 
being  sung  by  the  most  famous  singers  of  Paris  prevented 
their  words  reaching  the  ears  of  any  around  them. 

"My  thoughts  then  were — could  a  woman  with  so 
much  poetry  in  her  face  as  Madame  de  Lira  carries  in 
hers,  be  as  utterly  given  over  to  the  vanities,  the  artifices, 
and  the  egotism  of  her  world,  as  the  whole  tenor  of  her 
life,  acts,  and  words,  would  lead  one  to  infer?" 

"You  but  wonder  what  I  wonder,  also!"  she  said  with 
an  accent  in  the  answer  which  left  no  doubt  of  its  sin- 
cerity. "We  women,  I  think,  have  poetry  on  our  lips, 
poetry  sometimes  in  our  faces;  but  we  have  hard,  bitter, 
bad  prose  in  our  hearts — the  passionless  calculating  prose 
of  avarice,  of  self-love,  of  insatiable  ambition!" 

"Nay — you  at  least  must  have  something  higher  than 
this,  or  you  would  not  lay  blame  to  yourself?" 

"Why?  May  not  one  see  one's  own  sin,  even  when 
one  is  saturated  through  and  through  with  it?  A  man 
murders  ;  but  1  do  not  believe  he  ever  ceases  to  see 
bloodshed  as  hateful.  So  we  murder  our  higher  natures, 
but,  if  we  have  anything  of  conscience  left  in  us,  we  know 
that  the  slaughter  is  criminal." 

"You  have  not  killed  yours  if  you  still  regret  it  ?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND    STRAY.         4G3 

"How  can  you  tell?  I  can  scarcely  tell  myself.  I  have 
not  killed  it?  No!  By  such  a  subtle  euphuism  as  thai 
by  which  Byzantine  sovereigns  swore  they  had  not  killed 
their  predecessors,  when  they  had  only  smote  their  eyes 
to  blindness,  and  sealed  their  lives  down  in  dung-eons!1' 

He  regarded  her  earnestly. 

"You  have  not  killed  it.  With  you  the  prison-bars 
will  be  loosed,  and  the  blinded  eyes  will  see  the  light, 
when " 

"When  what?" 

"  When  you  shall  love." 

The  graveness  and  the  sadness  of  his  voice  made  the 
words  far  more  impressive  than  if  they  had  been  uttered 
in  the  accenl  of  a  lover.  They  were  passionless  and 
melancholy,  strangely  contrasting  with  the  gayety,  the 
brilliancy,   and    the    levity    of  the    palace-scene    around 

them. 

She  heard,  with  a  sense  of  proud  joy,  that  she  had 
thus  compelled  even  from  him  the  homage  of  interesl  and 
warning;  also  with  a  vague  sense  of  wonder  why  the 
speeeh  of  this  man — who  in  all  things  was  most  utterly 
dissimilar  to  him — brought  hack  on  her  thoughts,  and 
carried  with  them  the  same  influence  as  the  utterances 
of  Tricotrin. 

"  Pardon  me  the  freedom  of  speech.*"  pursued  Estmere, 
with  a  slight  weary  smile.  "By  the  years  which  are 
between  us,  I  may  use  a  latitude  of  phrase  that  would 
be  denied  to  others  younger  and  more  fortunate,  although 
privileged.  You  asked  for  my  candor;  I  have  given 
it.  1  believe  that  much  softness,  which  you  now  abjure, 
will  awaken  in  you  when  love  shall  have  been  taught  to 
you." 

Ber  eyes  clouded,  and  gleamed  impatientlj  under  their 
languid  lid-  and  curling  lashes.  She  was  incensed  at  the 
care  with  which  he  had  hastened  to  disclaim  for  his  words 
the  look  of  any  amorous  meaning,  ami  to  indicate  that 
he  left  the  sweet  task  of  teaching  such  lessons  of  h>\  e  to 
all  others  who  might  choose  to  take  it. 

"Love!"  .-he  echoed,  with  a  lighl  laugh.  "1  have 
said  often  before, — 1  am  tired  of  only  hearing  the  word  ! 
I  ha\  (    no  want  of  it,  no  belief  in  it  !" 


464  TRICOTRIN, 

♦'That  was  my  conclusion." 

"And  you  tell  me  so  in  a  tone  that  is  in  itself  a  rebuke! 
Love  ? — the  gipsies  of  Hugo,  the  sentimentalists  of  Goethe, 
the  rhapsodists  of  Shelley,  may  make  it  the  god  of  their 
being;  but  we — we  who  have  the  world — can  look  on  it 
at  most  as  only  a  toy,  a  distraction,  a  thing  to  blow  with 
each  breeze  like  the  child's  paper  windmill !" 

His  eyes  never  changed  from  their  grave  study  of  her. 
Jle  answered  her  calmly: 

"I  imagined  you  held  those  views.  What  I  said  was 
that,  when  you  think  differently,  then,  and  then  only,  will 
that  higher  and  gentler  nature  I  spoke  of  arise  in  you  ; 
if — you  possess  it.  But  since  you  look  thus  upon  love, 
is  it  well  or  merciful  on  your  part  to  do  your  very  utter- 
most, as  you  habitually  do,  to  awaken  it  everywhere,  and 
everywhere  inflame  it  to  its  greatest  strength,  and  devo- 
tion, and  folly  ?" 

She  tossed  her  golden  head  backward  with  a  magnifi- 
cent audacity  of  consciousness.    ■ 

"Would  you  have  me  veil  my  face,  then,  in  pity  to 
mankind  ?" 

He  smiled  at  the  arrogance  of  this  vanity:  a  smile  that 
she  could  not  translate. 

"  Perhaps,  you  save  some  as  effectually  as  though  you 
veiled  it,  when  you  succeed  in  proving  to  them  that  with 
that  beauty  there  goes  no  heart !  If  I  be  discourteous, 
pardon  me;  you  desired  candor." 

"And  your  candor,  like  most  other  candor,  appears  to 
be  only — Condemnation !" 

She  spoke  with  bitterness ;  she  was  so  deeply  galled 
by  this  second  sentence,  in  which  he  had  conveyed  to  her 
that,  however  perilous  to  others,  she  was  free  of  peril 
to  him. 

Estmere  smiled  again. 

"Poor  candor!  It  is  never  right.  If  agreeable,  it  is 
denounced  as  flattery;  if  distasteful,  it  is  slighted  as 
censure !" 

He  left  her  side  soon  afterward  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
cantata;  left  her  to  a  vivid,  heartsick,  impatient  sense  of 
powerlessness  to  move,  or  touch,  or  win  him,  such  as 
never  before  had  been  known  among  her  countless  and 


THE  STORY  OF  A     WAIF   AND   STRAY.         405 

effortless  victories:  a  restless,  angered,  despairing  knowl- 
edge thai  he  held  her  in  doubt,  in  condemnation,  almost 
in  contempt,  and  that  he  had  told  her,  almost  openly,  that 
for  him  she  possessed  no  allurement. 

Ee  had  humiliated  her,  and  deeply  angered  her;  but 
he  had  attained  more  influence  over  her,  more  attraction 
for  her,  than  he  had  exercised  before;  and,  despite  the 
limitless  faith  she  felt  in  her  own  omnipotence,  she  did 
not  divine  that  Estmere  himself  had  thought — 

"She  is  right  perhaps!  To  have  love  withheld  from 
her,  even  bv  the  coldest  and  the  wisest,  her  face  had  need 
to  remain  unseen  !" 

Nevertheless,  although  he  acknowledged  this,  he  lin- 
gered in  ill'1  place  where  that  face  me1  his  sight  or  was 
recalled  to  his  memory,  with  every  day  which  brought 
the  sea  of  carriages  rolling  through  the  sunlight  of  the 
st  reets.  with  e\  eiy  night  which  filled  the  elm  in  hers  of  the 
palaces  with  banquet,  or  ceremonial,  or  festivity. 

And  he  saw  her  beauty  at  its  height,  her  nature  at  its 
w  orst. 

Unguarded  now  by  the  care  of  her  lost  husband's  ten- 
derness, which  had  in  other  years  so  sedulously  sheltered 
her  from  any  peril,  she  was  free  to  follow  to  their  wildest 
extravagance  her  own  caprices  and  desires. 

She  had  been  left  at  perfect  freedom;  no  rein  remained 
on  her  will  or  her  Fancy. 

Those  who  had  the  trust  of  her  properties  were  two 
aged  men  of  high  rank  and  courtly  breed,  who  were 
speedily  contenl  to  see  all  things  through  her  e\ 
There  was  no  sort  of  check  upon  the  indulgence  of  that 
intense  passion  for  gorgeous  display,  sensuous  pomp,  and 
ever-varying  distraction,  which  she — with  the  soul  in  her 
of  the  Wait'  and  Stray — never  wearied  of  enjoying  to  its 
rmost  abandonment.  They  told  her,  in  some  alarm, 
that  with  ten  years  of  such  expenditure  of  hers  even  the 

massive    fortunes,  on    which    she    had    entered,   would    be 

dissipated  by  the  ceaseless  .-train.     She  laughed.     To  a, 

woman,  who  knew  I  hat  she  could  select  auot  her  lord  from 
princes  it  she  chose  upon  the  morrow,  the  threat  of  future 
ruin  was  only  a  gay  grotesque  jest. 

All  that  she  did  was  done  in  an  exquisite  harmony,  re- 


406  TRICOT1!  1 X, 

finement,  and  elegance  of  taste;  because  there  was  in  her 
that  innate  sense  of  fitness,  and  of  beauty,  which  had  in 
her  childhood  made  every  coarse  tone,  or  motley  hue, 
irritating-  and  painful  to  her;  and  which  had  led  her,  un- 
consciously, to  arrange  her  very  wild  flowers  in  blending 
colors  that  would  have  charmed  a  painter's  love  of  pure 
and  sympathetic  tones. 

Though  reared  in  poverty,  she  had  been  reared  in  such 
a  manner  as  cultured  and  fostered  all  this  delicacy  of  ar- 
tistic feeling,  and  instinct  for  symmetrical  form,  to  its  fall 
development.  Where  this  sense  once  lives,  it  is  imper- 
ishable ;  and  makes  the  mind  which  it  pervades  incapa- 
ble of  doing  it  an  outrage.  It  forces  the  Roman  beggar 
te  fling  his  rags  around  him  with  the  dignity  of  a  toga;  it 
impels  the  Campagna  model  to  fold  her  nude  limbs  into 
the  sublime  repose  of  a  Phydian  statue. 

But  for  all  that,  she  loosed  herself  to  the  sweet  exercise 
of  her  power  in  every  imaginable  form  of  extravagance 
and  of  display.  The  exaggerated  luxuries,  the  inordinate 
splendor,  the  wanton  waste  that  are  characteristic  of  the 
age,  of  the  world,  of  the  city,  in  which  she  lived,  reached 
in  her  their  greatest  height.  The  old  half-barbaric  pas- 
sion for  the  visible  witnesses  of  wealth  and  sovereignty, 
native  to  her,  evinced  itself  now  that  she  possessed  the 
license  to  indulge  it. 

She  had  the  oriental  love  of  glow,  and  glitter,  and 
pomp,  and  sound  ;  she  had  all  that  temper  of  the  present 
century  which  inclines  it  to  scenic  effects  in  the  lieu  of 
poetic  beauty,  to  lustrous  color  in  the  lieu  of  accurate  pro- 
portion, to  intoxicating  choruses  in  the  lieu  of  classic  ca- 
dence. And  she  launched  herself  into  such  extremity  of 
magnificence  as  gives  to  such  an  instinct  as  this  an  ever- 
changing  and  perpetual  delight. 

Unconsciously  to  herself,  through  all  her  dullness  of 
pride  and  arrogance  of  scorn,  there  shone  out  in  her  mode 
of  life  the  impulse  and  evidence  of  one  who  has  not  from 
birth  upward  inherited  power:  and  to  whom  its  posses- 
sion is  therefore  as  a  sorcerer's  wand,  whose  magic  is  un- 
ceasingly wondrous  to  the  one  brought  within  its  mystic 
circle. 

None  noted  this ;  for  her  artistic  taste  was  so  unerring 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  4 (IT 

that  no  false  note,  or  coarse  color,  in  the  pageantry  of  her 
existence  ever  betrayed  it.     But  it  was  there 

The  born-empress  is  very  weary  of  those  hoars  in  which 
she  must  wear  her  state-robes,  and  receive  the  formality 
of  homage.  The  woman,  raised  from  privacy,  into  the 
blaze  of  a  monarch's  glory  deems  no  hours  so  exquisite  as 

those  in  which  the  people  k 1,  submissive,  at  her  feet, 

and  the  crown  rests  on  her  brow. 

Viva  disclosed  thai  she  was  not  an  hereditary  sovereign 
bv  this  one  trail  alone — that  she  was  never  willing  to  lav 
her  scepter  aside,  never  desirous  of  being  quit  of  her  pur- 
ples, never  so  perfeel  ly  content  as  when  t  be  full  luster  and 
luxury  of  her  royalty  attested  to  its  power. 

Were  some  rare  jewel  on  sale,  at  whose  cost  even 
princes  hesitated,  she  purchased  it  ;  were  some  picture  in 
ih.  market  at  a  fabulous  price,  she  made  it  hers;  were 
there  some  tropical  flower  rare  beyond  all  others,  she 
would  spend  thousands  to  add  it  to  her  conservatories; 
were  some  entertainment  spoken  of,  which  had  been  sig- 
nalized by  some  unwonted  thing,  she  would  eclipse  it  with 
Mime  marvel  a' hundredfold  more  beautiful,  eccentric,  or 
extravagant,  furnished  converse  for  the  world. 

The  jewel  might  be  utterly  superfluous,  the  picture  one 
which  did  not  please  her  taste,  the  (lower  might  have  no 
special  loveliness,  ami  the  festival  no  special  charm,  to 
her  own  thinking.  Bu1  merely  to  possess  them,  to  dis- 
play t  hem,  to  furnish  (' 1  for  I  he  world's  speech  by  them, 

was  an  unfailing  delighl  which  never  palled  on  her,  be- 
cause it  gratified  her  sense  of  empire,  her  consciousness  of 
being  without  rival. 

in  no  manner  could  she  attain  this  delight  more  easily, 
more  constantly,  or  with  more  publicity,  than  by  the  pleas- 
ures with  which  she  filled  her  own  time  and  that  of  the 
society  she  gathered  about  her.  Her  inventive  wit  found 
field,  and  interest,  in  the  conception  and  execution  of 
countless  fresh  fashions  of  distraction  and  of  excitement. 

The  graceful   fantastic  fancy  that  hail    once   made  her 
dance  like  an  alniah   among  tin''  scarlet    bean-  of  the  c  it- 
garden,  and  believe  herself  a  queen  when  .-he  sat  in 
the  old  beech-tree  with  a  tall  sword-lily  for  her  scepter, 
DOW  made  herdevise  a  1  bousand  way-  ol  adding  brilliancy. 


468  TRICOT R  IN, 

and  variety,  and  surprise,  and  cost— that  great  modern 
gauge  of  every  merit, — to  her  amusements  and  entertain- 
ments. Exclusive  with  all  the  haughty  exclusivism  of  an 
earlier  nobility,  lavish  with  all  the  profuse  prodigality  of 
present  imperialism,  reckless  with  the  levity  of  the  age, 
and  dazzling  with  a  seduction  all  her  own,  her  fetes  and 
her  banquets  were  the  theme  of  the  world  of  pleasure,  the 
paradise  of  her  associates,  the  despair  of  all  outside  her 
chosen  pale.  She  ruled  pleasure,  and  was  ruled  by  it : 
and  no  other  thing  was  the  object,  or  the  idol,  of  her 
days. 

Generous,  indeed,  she  was ;  whoever  asked  her  for 
money  had  it.  In  moments  of  remorse  she  would  strive 
to  still  her  conscience  by  some  such  large  charity  as  that 
with  which  she  succored  the  stone-mason's  desolate  family. 
But  these  were  fitful,  unguided,  the  offspring  of  impulse 
always,  never  of  principle. 

She-  had  delivered  herself  wholly  over  to  the  wor- 
ship of  egotism,  and  extravagance,  and  the  joyous  re- 
ligion of  pleasure;  and  she  abandoned  herself  all  the 
more  completely,  and  violently,  to  the  pursuit  of  these 
when  the  sting  of  one  man's  neglect  pierced  through  the 
velvet  folds  of  her  exultant  vanity,  when  one  thorn  amid 
all  her  innumerable  roses  thrust  itself  into  her  bosom, 
and  reminded  her  that  she  was  mortal. 

Thus  he  saw  her  empire  at  its  height — her  character 
at  its  worst;  and  still,  despite  these,  he  lingered  near  her, 
and  still  doubted  if,  in  this  woman,  there  were  not  some- 
thing higher  and  nobler  latent,  that  her  sycophants  never 
roused  and  her  lovers  never  wakened. 

And  one  night  when  he  chanced  to  be  in  her  presence, 
an  incident  again  arose  which  again  made  him  ask  him- 
self: "  Since  she  has  the  emotion  of  pity,  will  she  not 
have  also  one  day  in  her  heart  its  twin-divinitv  of  love  ?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         469 


CHAPTER  XLVII. 

There  was  a  new  piece  at  one  of  the  most  famous  and 
most  sparkling  of  the  theaters  of  Paris — one  of  those 
gay  minglings  of  music,  travesty,  beauty,  burlesque,  and 
wit,  which  are  half  opera,  half  comedy,  wholly  spectacle, 
to  which  the  world  will  run,  leaving  the  grave  decorums 
of  legitimate  art  as  the  Komans  would  run  to  the  gladia- 
tors  and  the  rope-dancers,  leaving  the  stage  of  Terence. 

"Let  me  be  but  amused  !  Lei  me  only  laugh  if  I  die!'1 
cries  the  world  in  every  aire.  It  has  so  much  of  grief 
and  tragedy  in  its  own  realities,  it  lias  so  many  bitter 
tears  to  shed  in  its  solitude,  it  lias  such  weariness  of  labor 
without  end,  it  has  such  infinitude  of  woe  to  regard  in 
its  prisons,  in  its  homes,  in  its  battle-fields,  in  its  harlot- 
ries, in  its  avarices,  in  its  famines;  it  is  so  heart-sick  of 
them  all.  that  it  would  fain  be  lulled  to  forgetfulness  of 
its  own  terrors;  it  asks  only  to  laugh  tor  awhile,  even  if 
it  laugh  but  at  shadows. 

"The  world  is  vain,  frivolous,  reckless  of  that  which 
is  earnesl  ;  it  is  a  courtesan  who  thinks  only  of  pleasure, 
of  adornment,  of  gewgaws,  of  the  toys  of  the  hour!"  is 
the  reproach  which  its  satirists  in  every  age  hoot  at  it. 

Alas !  it  is  a  courtesan  who,  having  sold  herself  to  evil, 
strives  to  forgel  her  vile  bargain;  who,  having  washed 
her  cheeks  white  with  saltesl  tears,  strives  to  believe  that 
tin-  painl  call.-  the  true  color  back;  who,  having  been  face 
to  face  for  bo  long  with  blackesl  guilt,  keenesl  hung 
dreadesl  woe.  Btrives  to  loose  their  ghosts,  thai  in 
santly  follow  her,  in  the  tumult  of  her  own  thoughtless 
laughter. 

••  l.i  I  me  he  hut  amused  !'* — the  cry  is  the  aching  cry 
of  a  world  that  is  overborne  with  pain,  and  with  longing 
for  the  golden  years  of  its  youth;  that  cry  is  never  louder 
than  when  the  world  is  mosl  conscious  of  its  own  in- 
hm\ . 

In  the  Roman  Empire,  in  the  Byzantine  Empire,  in  the 

10 


470  TRICOTRIN, 

Second  Empire  of  Napoleonic  France,  the  world,  reeking 
with  corruption,  staggering  under  the  burden  of  tyran- 
nies, and  delivered  over  to  the  dominion  of  lust,  has 
shrieked  loudest  in  its  blindness  of  suffering — "Let  me 
only  laugh  if  I  die  !" 

The  piece  commenced  with  gay,  airy,  mirthful  music; 
extravagant,  sparkling,  indecent,  ironical,  spectacular, 
voluptuous,  as  suits  the  temper  of  this  modern  age;  suits 
its  fatigue,  its  languor,  its  fever  of  discontent,  its  exhaus- 
tion of  speculation,  suits  it  because,  being  full  of  despair, 
it  desires  distraction,  and,  ail  its  thoughts  being  doubts, 
it  strives  so  hard  not  to  think. 

As  the  first  silvery  notes  of  the  chief  actress  rang  on 
the  air,  the  audience  welcomed  them  with  tumultuous 
delight. 

She  was  a  great  artist  in  her  fashion ;  in  the  by-play, 
the  trivialties,  the  amorous  glances,  the  sensual  graces, 
the  union  of  elegance  and  lasciviousness,  the  eloquence 
of  smile,  of  word,  of  gesture,  which  are  needed  far  more, 
on  the  modern  stage,  than  is  tragic  passion  or  scholarly 
comprehension.  She  was  a  great  artist;  she  seemed  to 
have  the  gift  of  eternal  youth  and  of  everlasting  fame; 
her  public  had  never  wearied  of  Coriolis. 

The  night  was  a  new  triumph,  many  as  had  been  the 
nights  of  triumph  which  she  had  numbered. 

But  there  had  come  a  certain  weariness  to  her  in  this 
public  festival ;  a  certain  toilsomeness  had  stolen  into  the 
perpetual  play  of  the  mime;  a  certain  impatience  of  this 
endless  robing,  and  singing,  and  laughing,  and  dancing, 
and  wearing  of  smiles,  had  entered  into  her,  well  as  she 
had  long  loved  her  life. 

There  came  hours  now  in  which  she  wanted  rest; 
hours  in  which  she  felt  her  head  ache  and  her  limbs  grow 
tired;  hours  of  satiety,  of  exhaustion,  of  fretful  fever; 
hours,  inevitable,  that  come  to  the  empress  as  to  the 
act  less,  to  the  statesman  as  to  the  stage-clown.  And 
now,  as  she  frolicked  on  the  boards,  and  moved  like  a 
sylph,  and  caroled  like  a  bird,  her  eyes,  wandering  over 
the  great  semicircle  of  the  house,  rested  on  one  woman 
who  sat  regarding  her, — a  woman  young,  of  exceeding 
beauty,  appareled  like  a  sovereign,  and  with  her  court- 


THE   STORY    OF  A    WAIF  AND    STRAY.  171 

iers  surrounding  her  in  a  group  thai  was  inattentive  to 
the  spectacle,  and  only  attentive  to  her  face  and  to  her 

words. 

"Who  is  thai  piece  of  splendor  yonder?"  had  asked 
Coriolis  once,  firsl  seeing  this  Woman. 

"It  is  the  Duchess  de  Lira,"  they  had  answered. 

Coriolis  ever  looked  at  her  closely  when  she  herself 
passed  to  the  front  of  the  stage. 

"You  are  a  Duchess — a  great  lady  of  France, — you 
are  in  the  flower  of  your  youth  and  the  flush  of  your 
beauty, — you  can  have  all  I  have  had  without  taking 
thoughl  for  it  or  toil  for  it. — you  are  an  aristocrat  ; — and 
I  hate  you!''  she  said  in  her  soul,  this  night,  watching 
this  spectator,  whom  she  envied,  as  she  played  on  in  her 
new  extravaganza,  and  heard  the  thunders  of  the  theater 
hail  it  as  the  greatesl  of  all  her  successes. 

She  herself  had  enjoyed,  indeed;  hut  time  was  stealing 
the  elasticity  from  her  limbs,  the  buoyancy  from  her 
spirit,  the  bloom  from  her  skin,  the  gloss  from  her  hair, 
the  spontaneity  from  her  laughter  :  and  from  such  women 
die  Time  robs  all,  and  to  them  brings  nothing.  She 
had  her  scepter,  indeed;  hut  the  passage  of  the  years 
had  loaded  its  ivory  and  gold  with  lead,  and  ^\\v  began 
to  grow  tired  of  the  Lncessanl  exertion  which  was  needed 
to  hold  it  in  her  own  grasp,  ami  prevenl  it  from  passing 
to  the  outstretched  hands  of  her  rivals. 

Meanwhile,  t  he  one  whom  .-he  envied  watched  her  in 
turn  wdth  a  curious  emotion. 

Viva  never  heard  the  actress's  name  without  a  thrill 
of  horror.  She  never  saw  it  lettered  on  the  walls  of  a, 
city  without  ;i  throb  at  her  heart,  as  though  she  saw  a 
snake's  eyes  watching  her.  It  was  ever  an  agony  to  her 
to  recall  that  nighl  of  her  madness.  As  she  hail  grown 
to  know  the  ways  and  the  wisdom  of  t  he  World,  and  had 

beheld  the  danger  through  which  she  had  passed  by  the 
lighl  of  that  world's  knowledge,  she  knew  what  the  pre- 
cipice had  been  on  which  she  then  had  stood  in  such 
laughing  and  trustful  security.      At  times  when  its  mem- 

* 

ory  rushed  over  her,  she  felt  the  hot  blood  flush  over  her 
brow  and  b<  -'in  at  the  mere  thoughl  that  such  a  peril  had 
ever  touched  her,  such  an  ignominy  ever  approached  her. 


472  TRICOTRTN, 

Who  her  boy-wooer  had  been  she  never  knew  ;  she 
wondered  often.  And  when  she  mused  on  him,  and  on 
her  temptress,  a  deadly  hatred,  alien  to  all  the  negligent 
gayety  of  her  temper,  woke  in  her ;  a  scorching  shame 
consumed  her. 

All  the  fair,  sweet,  harmless  things  of  her  early  life 
were  well-nigh  forgotten;  all  that  sunny,  serene,  inno- 
cent existence,  while  yet  she  had  taken  no  more  thought 
than  the  lilies  of  the  field,  or  sinned  more  sin  than  the 
birds  of  the  air,  had  faded  into  one  soft  haze  of  dim,  pure, 
confused  color.  That  perfect  peace  in  which  she  had  not 
known  that  she  was  happy, — because  she  had  not  then 
known  what  sorrow  meant,  and  thus  had  found  no  meas- 
ure of  her  joy, — was  all  far  distant  to  her,  scarce  remem- 
bered more  than  is  the  sunlight  of  some  tranquil  un- 
memorable  summer-day  of  long  ago.  But  that  one  night's 
memories  were  branded  forever  as  with  fire  on  her  brain. 

That  men  should  still  live  who,  if  they  only  knew  what 
she  once  had  been,  could  point  at  her  as  one  whom  they 
had  beheld  at  the  house  of  a  courtesan  ! 

If  she  were  alone  when  this  remembrance  came  on  her 
she  wToulcl  pace  her  chamber  like  a  magnificent  leopardess, 
and  set  her  teeth  in  wrath  that  a  woman,  who  could  com- 
mand the  world,  could  not  yet  purchase  the  oblivion  of  a 
few  brief  hours ! 

It  maddened  her  the  more  because  she  knew  that,  but 
for  the  guardian  hand  which  had  seized  her  from  the 
flower-hidden  abyss,  she  would  have  entered  this  king- 
dom of  evil  to  which  she  had  been  tempted,  in  all  her 
supreme  faith  and  ignorance  and  guileless  vanity.  She 
knew  that — but  for  him — she  would  have  fled  to  the  pol- 
lution of  the  stage,  which  had  looked  to  her  such  immor- 
tal glory. 

She  knew  that  now  she  would  have  been  even  as 
Coriolis: — even  as  all  those  women  who  concealed  the 
leprosy  of  sin  with  the  satin  domino  of  the  masked  ball; 
who  avenged  their  own  outlawry  by  pitiless  plunder,  by 
merciless  dupery,  of  the  world  which  had  proscribed 
them;  who  dressed,  and  danced,  and  feasted,  and  had  no 
future ;  and  secure  of  a  banquet  to-day,  might  be  left  to 
starvation  to-morrow.    The  women  of  whom  she  thought 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         473 

with  all  the  horror  of  a  haughty  and  untempted  soul, 
with  all  the  scorn  of  an  imperial  and  lofty  life. 

She  would  have  been  of  them, — must  have  been  of 
them,  she  knew, — unless,  indeed,  in  the  first  moment  of 
despair,  when  the  truth  of  her  fate  should  have  broken 
on  her,  she  should  have  hurled  her  young  form  into  the 
depths  of  the  river.  And  the  sound  of  the  name  of  her 
temptress  ever  smote  on  her  ear  with  a  throb  of  shame, 
with  a  pang  of  guilt,  with  the  stealing  hiss,  as  of  a  ser- 
pent whose  fangs  had  once  been  in  her  flesh,  and  whose 
wound,  though  it  had  left  no  scar,  might  even  yet  prove 
mortal. 

Still — she  had  often  gone  to  sec  Coriolis.  Gone,  on 
that  Indefinable  impulse  which  sometimes  draws  men  and 
women  to  the  presence  of  their  foes;  on  that  mysterious 
attraction  which  deadly  injuries,  or  deadly  rivalries,  will 
make  more  potenl  still  than  the  attractions  of  love  or  of 
sympathy.  Though  it  wounded  her  so  poignantly  to  re- 
member that  night  of  her  wicked  folly,  yet  she  went 
where  that  remembrance  was  most  vividly  forced  on  her. 
Such  anomalies  are  strong  in  all  human-nature;  they 
are  especially  strong  in  woman-nature. 

"Could  /ever  have  been  t  hat  Little  fool  who  was  allured 
by  her  specious  promises,  who  saw  heaven  itself  in  the 
tinsel  of  her  stage  I"  she  t  nought  as  she  gazed  at  Coriolis. 
It  seemed  incredible  to  ber  thai  the  same  soul  should 
live  in  both,  that  the  same  personality  should  exist  in 
both, — in  the  little  bohemi an  with  the  scarlet  hood  over 
her  fair  curls,  who  had  listened  to  a  lie  as  to  a  voice  from 
heaven;  and  in  the  superb  duchess  whom  her  mirror  por- 
trayed, who  had  so  indolent  and  ironic  a  disdain  lor  all 
words  thai  were  breathed  to  her,  and  who  had  all  her 
world  beneath  ber  foot. 

"She   is   not    changed!"  she   murmured    unconsciously 
aloud. 

"Changed  I"  echoed  the  one  nearest  to  her  in  her  box, 
"from  what?" 

"From  the  time  I  hat   I  .-aw  her  first, — and  I  was  very 
young  then." 

Her  eyes  never  left  ( 'oriol  is  as  she  spoke.       NOW,  ill  the 

supremacy  of  her  power  and  possessions,  in  the  full] 

■pi* 


4U  TRICOTRIN, 

of  her  knowledge  and  experience,  in  the  security  of  her 
rank,  it  filled  her  with  a  strange  wondering  pity  to  think 
of  the  foolish,  trustful,  credulous  child  that  she  had  been, 
and  of  the  pathetic  senseless  love  that  she  had  once  borne 
this  sovereign  of  the  stage.  A  fierce  hate  thrilled  in  her 
also  as  she  watched  her  temptress.  Through  this  woman 
that  one  ineffaceable  memory  was  burned  into  her  haughty 
life ;  that  one  intolerable  shame  had  been  drawn  down  on 
her  proud  head  ;  that  one  loathsome  hour  had  been  lived 
through  to  pollute  her  past  ! 

"Actresses  never  change, — till  we  see  them  by  day- 
light!" Estmere  answered  her,  ignorant  where  her 
thoughts  wandered.  "  Look  through  your  glass  ere  you 
judge." 

She  did  so : — looked  long,  then  dropped  it  with  a 
shudder. 

"It  is  a  death's-head  under  a  mask  of  roses  and  lilies  ! 
And  yet  how  lovely  that  woman  still  is  !" 

"She  seems  to  move  you  ?" 

"  She  does ;  for, — when  I  saw  her  first  I  longed  to  be 
an  actress  too !" 

"You! — an  actress  !     Is  it  possible  ?" 

"Yes,  I.  Perhaps  I  am  one,  as  it  is.  How  can  you 
tell?" 

He  did  not  know  the  spring  of  the  half-remorseful 
words;  he  thought  she  implied  some  consciousness  that 
her  coquetry  was  hut  a  cruel  acting,  since  her  heart  was 
never  touched  to  feeling. 

"Let  your  higher  nature  speak,  and  follow  what  it 
says.  You  will  never  be  one  then,"  he  murmured  in 
her  ear. 

She  was  silent;  unwittingly  he  had  rebuked  her. 

"If  he  knew!"  she  thought,  meeting  the  clear,  grave 
eyes  of  the  man  whose  one  idol  was  inexorable  Truth, 
whose  one  unpardonable  sin  was  specious  Falsehood  ; 
and  she  drove  the  thought  from  her  as  fast  as  it  arose. 
She  had  had  no  need  to  think  all  through  the  years  of 
her  fortunate  life  :  she  left  that  travail  to  the  weary,  the 
unlovely,  the  wretched,  the  solitary.  Thought  was  their 
sentence,  their  solace:  with  her  it  had  naught  to  do. 

Outside  the  theater  it  was  a  cold,  dark,  ghastly  night. 


THE  STORY   OF  A     WAIF  AND    STRAY.  4*75 

Although  late  in  the  spring,  it  was  very  cheerless  and 
rained  heavily. 

About  the  end  of  the  second  act,  while  from  within 
the  hursts  of  music;  came,  now  faintly,  now  fully,  out  into 
the  street,  a  wanderer,  who  had  moved  restlessly  all  day 
and  night  to  and  fro  the  labyrinth  of  the  lighted  town, 
strayed  near  to  the  play-house  and  paused  ; — he  could  not 
have  told  why.  except  that  others  paused  with  him  ; — 
opposite  the  huilding  and  its  glittering  arc  and  stars  of 
gas-jets. 

The  wanderer  was  Bruno. 

He  stood,  without  knowing  what  he  did.  looking  up  at 
11. e  crescent  of  lights;  and  hearing,  without  knowing 
whal  he  heard,  the  distant  cadence  of  the  joyous  and  airy 
music. 

Close  at  his  elbow  pressed  a  sailor  of  his  own  southern 
seaboard,  a.  great,  fierce,  black-browed  barbarian,  half 
smuggler  and  had'  pirate,  who  yel  had  softness  sufficient 
in  him, — because  that  day  he  had  met  his  whilom  com- 
rade, and  had  been  scared  by  tin'  haggard  lace  which  he 
had  once  known  so  brigb.1  and  brown  under  the  shadow 
of  their  tawny  sails, — to  .-lay  staunchly  by  the  side  of  the 
stricken  man,  though  in  t he  eyes  that  turned  on  him  t hen; 
was  no  recognil  ion,  hut  only  t  he  mute  dull  suffering  of  an 
animal  spent  by  the  hunters  unto  death. 

"What  would  you  do,  Bruno?"  he  asked  hastily,  as 
the  fisherman  seeing  persons  enter  through  the  glittering 
doorway,  moved  forward  with  them  to  enter  also. 

lie  paused,  and  looked  for  the  lir.-t  time  with  a  gleam 
of  consciousness  on  the  features  of  his  ancient  sea  mate. 

"It  is  yon.  Royalle  ?"  he  murmured  wearily.  "Are 
1  lie  boats  ready  ?  You  musl  go  u  ithout  me ; — she  is  not 
come  home." 

The  streets,  the  gas-lights,  the  throng,  the  music,  were 
naughl  !■>  him;  he  thoughl  he  was  on  the  yellow  sands 
of  his  old  home  with  the  fishing-smacks  standing:  ou1  to 
sea  in  a  lair  wind,  and  his  little  cabin  high  up  upon  the 
rocks  above  the  silvery  plumes  id'  olive. 

"  There  are  no  boats,"  muttered  Royalle".  "  We  are  in 
Paris,  and  this  is  no  place  fur  \  oil." 

"Paris?    Paris?"    the   other   echoed,   the   dulled    drain 


476  TRICOTRIN, 

playing  with  the  word.  "  Is  it  Paris  ?  She  used  to  wish 
for  Paris.  May  be  she  is  here, — I  have  sought  every- 
where." 

And  he  forced  his  way  nearer  to  the  open  door. 

Iioyalle  seized  him  and  sought  to  force  him  back. 

"  Not  there,  not  there,  Bruno  I"  he  murmured.  "  What 
avail  to  seek  her  in  scenes  of  pleasure  ?" 

The  sailor  shook  him  off,  and  went  forward  with  the 
dogged  resolve  of  the  insane. 

"  Losing  gold  ye  seek  hither  and  thither,"  he  muttered. 
"  Shall  I  do  less  by  my  treasure  ?" 

Ere  he  could  be  stayed,  he  had  flung  clown  a  coin  as  he 
saw  others  doing,  and  had  thrust  himself  into  the  throng 
that  was  forcing  itself  through  the  mouth  of  the  pit. 
They  were  separated ;  Royalle  could  do  nothing  except 
follow  him. 

The  glare  of  light,  the  din  of  music,  the  blaze  of  gold 
and  of  color  seemed  to  blind  and  to  stupefy  him.  He 
stood  wedged  in  by  the' crowd  into  whose  center  he  had 
thrust  himself;  his  gaunt,  tall  form  towering  above 
theirs  ;  his  wild  pathetic  eyes  glancing  from  side  to  side 
like  a  hunted  dog's;  his  blue  canvas  shirt  flung  back 
from  his  chest ;  his  long  dark  hair  streaming  backward 
from  the  bronzed  southern  grandeur  of  his  hardened 
features.  He  was  like  a  desert  animal  suddenly  strayed 
in  among  a  laughing  human  crowd. 

There  was  a  scene  of  fairy-land  on  the  stage  which  the 
audience  were  applauding  till  the  roof  rang  again ;  a 
scene  of  wood  and  water,  and  silver  cascades,  and  aisles 
of  roses,  and  white-winged  sylphs  that  fluttered  on  the 
branches,  and  troops  of  girls,  arrayed  like  every  flower 
that  bloomed  beneath  the  sun,  who  danced  in  airiest 
measures  to  the  music  sounding  through  the  house. 

To  the  fisherman  of  the  Riviera  it  was  all  real;  his 
great  brown  eyes  gazed  on  it  with  wondering  awe ; 
through  his  dimmed  brain  there,  wandered  weird  tales, 
heard  in  his  childhood,  of  enchanted  lands  where  no 
mortal  foot  might  wander.  He  stood  erect,  amazed, 
motionless  ;  dizzy  with  the  riot  of  sound  and  the  modula- 
tions of  motion,  and  the  radiance  of  color  that  had  broken 
on  his  vision  as  he  came  out  from  the  darkness  of  the 
night. 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  477 

And  iill  1he  while  his  eyes  were  seeking  out  each  sepa- 
rate face  in  the  massed  loveliness  of  that  myriad  of  danc- 
ing girls; — seeking  out  hers  which  he  could  not  find. 

From  the  hack  of  the  flowering  glades  there  came  the 
graceful,  swaying,  Boating  form  of  a  woman  arrayed  like 
a  lotus-lily.  Her  form  was  scarce  clothed  in  the  white 
and  green  that  fashioned  the  leaves  of  the  lily  ;  her  suuny 
hair,  chaplet-crowned,  streamed  behind  her;  her  azure 
eye-  laughed  with  arch  gayety; — Coriolis  looked  in  the 
spring  of  her  earliest  youth  as  she  bounded  into  the  circle 
of  girl-flowers,  and  poured  out  her  song  with  the  easy 
sweet  mirth  of  the  lark. 

Across  her  song  a  wild  cry  rang: 

"It  is  she!" 

lie  stood  erect  a  moment,  his  eyes  blazing  with  light,  his 
arm  stretched  out,  his  chest  heaving  with  deep-drawn 
breaths;  then  with  a  leap  like  a  deer's  he  sprang  from 
seal  to  sent  over  the  head.-  of  the  people  on  to  the  stage 
where  she  stood, 

'Idle  music  mi  her  li]>~  was  stricken  mute;  the  band  of 
living  flowers  fell  from  around  her  ami  left  her  alone. 
Criminal  fear  came  into  her  radiant  eyes.  She  stood 
powerless,  motionless,  gazing  on  the  man  she  had  dis- 
honored, while  on  the  players  and  their  public  a  horrified 

silence  fell. 

lie  stretched  his  arms  out  to  her,  while  his  voice 
thrilled  through  the  stillness. 

"Madelonl  Madelon!  Thou  art  in  paradise,  and  hast 
forgol  me  ! — is  it  so  ?" 

His  whole  frame  drooped,  his  limbs  lost  their  strength, 

he   shuddered,   ami    st 1    gazing   at    her: — the    rising 

tumuli  of  the  house,  the  confused  clamor  of  the  amazed 
multitude  had  no  power  to  reach  his  ear:  he  only  saw 
the  woman  whom  he  had  sought  through  the  desolation 
of  the  world  ; — the  woman  who,  found,  shrank  from  him, 
and  w  as  afraid. 

That  guilty  fear  which  he  met  in  her  look  pierced  him 
like  a  dagger's  thrust;  reason  seemed  to  comeback  to 
him  with  the  shuddering  horror  that  ran  through  his 
Benses.  He  lifted  his  head,  a-  the  li,,ii  mortally  wounded 
will   raise  it  to  look  once   more  aJ  his  foes    and  gazed   011 


4*78  TR1C0TRIN, 

that  heated,  breathless,  motley  multitude  below,  then 
gazed  again  on  her; — on  the  snowy  bare  limbs,  on  the 
bosom  that  panted  above  its  vesture  of  gold,  on  the 
painted  loveliness  which,  near,  had  no  youth  and  no 
bloom. 

Then  he  knew  that  this  was  not  heaven,  but  hell ;  and 
the  blindness  of  half  a  lifetime  was  pierced  in  twain  by 
that  terrible  light.  He  seized  her,  and  gazed  into  her 
eyes,  and  crushed  her  soft  frame  against  him,  and  flung 
her  from  him  with  a  cry  that  smote  the  listening  people 
as  though  they  had  but  one  ear  and  one  soul. 

"You  are  not  mine,  though  you  live  in  her  form!  Ah! 
vile  thing,  cruel  devil,  that  mocks  me!  What  have  you 
clone  with  the  creature  I  loved?  You  give  her  limbs  to 
the  eyes  of  the  lewd  ;  and  her  loveliness  to  the  lust  of  the 
mob;  and  the  lips  that  I  kissed  to  the  crowds  that  de- 
vour her! — but  where  is  the  soul  that  I  worshiped? 
where  is  the  life  that  was  mine  ?  They  were  God's  ;  you 
could  not  take  them?  They  lie  in  His  hand  :  you  could 
not  steal  them  with  her  body?" 

He  stood  erect  one  moment,  as  men  will  stand  when  a 
death-shot  has  struck  them  ;  his  eyes- gazed  out  over  the 
risen  throngs,  burning  and  blind;  on  his  face  was  the 
majesty  of  an  unutterable  despair.  Then,  with  one  great 
cry  from  a  broken  heart,  he  flung  his  arms  above  his 
head  and  fell — his  forehead  striking  on  the  fallen  limbs  of 
his  wife,  the  life-blood  welling  from  his  mouth,  and  stain- 
ing purple  the  white  lilies  on  her  breast.  When  they 
raised  him  he  was  dead: — he  had  been  dying  more  than 
twenty  years. 

And  on  the  silence  of  the  horror-stricken  throngs  the 
voice  of  the  sailor  Royalle  rang  as  he  turned  and  faced 
them,  lifting  up  the  lifeless  body  in  his  arms. 

"  She  was  his  wife,  look  you.  Yet  God  made  women, 
— God  made  women  and  gave  them  to  men !" 

A  shudder  ran  through  all  the  listening  multitude. 
For  once  the  people  of  Paris  saw  no  mirth  in  the  tragedy 
of  a  man's  dishonor. 

And  in  the  tumult,  and  the  terror,  and  the  stupefaction 
of  the  great  crowded  house,  the  proudest  and  coldest 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         47 !> 

woman  there  staggered  to  her  feet,  ami,  blind  and  faint, 
stretched  out  her  hands  to  the  one  nearesl  her. 

"Take   mo  away!"    she    murmured.     "Oh,   take    me 
away.     I  heard  their  story  once,  and  saw  no  sin  in  her!" 


CHAPTER   XLVIII. 

Until  the  latest  hoars  of  that  night  Estmere  sat  in 
the  loneliness  of  his  great  apartments,  with  his  hound's 
head  lying  on  his  knee,  and  his  thoughts  sunk  far  into  the 
past. 

The  scene  which  he  had  witnessed  had  opened  afresh 
a  long-closed  wound.  The  wound  had  pierced  too  deeply 
for  the  jarred  nerves  ever  tfl  close  again  impervious  to 
pain;  and  the  tragedy  of  the  theater  had  broughl  back 
on  his  memory,  with  all  the  freshness  of  a  recent  blow, 
the  time  when  he  had  himself  surprised  the  sin  of  the 
wife  whom  his  root'  had  sheltered  and  his  honor  crowned. 

On  the  autumnal  day  when  Tricotrin  had  gazed  upon 
him  in  Ids  solitude  at  Villiers,  that  wound  had  been 
soothed  only  by  the  passage  of  a  few  years.  Betwixt 
then  and  now  there  had  stretched  a  long  interval  of  pub- 
lic life,  tilled  with  a  long  succession  of  public  honor,  pub- 
lic services,  public  ambitions,  public  dignities  and  labors. 
The  early  treachi  ry  lay  far  away,  folded  under  the  sealed 
pages  of  his  losl  youth. 

The  throb  of  its  horror  had  been  soothed  by  the  ano- 
dynes of  greal  attainments;  the  ache  of  its  shame  had 
been  stilled  by  the  balm  of  a  nation's  trust.  Many  sea- 
-  would  now  pass  by,  and  leave  its  memory  una- 
wakened.  Bui  there  were  times  when  thai  memory  was 
still  roused  in  all  its  suffering  ;  and  this  was  one  of  them. 

All  thai  passage  of  his  life  was  stamped  into  his  mind 
with  letters  i<\'  lire. 

The  idolatry  with  which  he  had  loved  the  woman  who 
had  betrayed  him;  the  intoxication  of  their  Qrst  hour-  of 


480  TRICOTR1N, 

union;  the  slow-dawning  consciousness,  so  long  thrust 
back  from  sight,  that  this  creature,  so  exquisite  in  form, 
was  mindless  and  soulless  as  any  beautiful  cheetah  gam- 
boling under  Indian  suns.  The  loyalty  to  her,  strong  in 
him  as  a  religion,  which,  because  she  was  his,  forbade  him 
to  insult  her  with  so  much  even  as  suspicion  ;  the  proud 
chivalry  which  withheld  from  him  by  its  noble  blindness 
a  thousand  signs  that  to  meaner  natures  would  have  suf- 
ficed as  warning.  The  unutterable  horror  which  over- 
whelmed him,  when  chance  revealed  his  own  dishonor  to 
him,  and  he  found  his  spoiler  in  his  household  hireling, 
in  the  creature  of  his  bounty,  in  the  pampered,  trusted, 
caressed  debtor  of  his  race  and  of  his  purse — all  these 
seemed  to  him  as  things  of  yesterday,  as  their  memories 
arose  with  the  death  scene  of  Bruno. 

That  treachery  had  colored  all  his  life.  It  had  killed 
happiness  in  him  with  one  blow.  It  had  left  him  with- 
out aught  of  the  colors  of  joy  upon  his  life,  though  he 
had  in  their  stead  wide  command  and  passionless  peace. 
Suspicion  it  could  not  teach  to  a  temper  too  generous, 
too  fearless,  and  too  proud  for  suspicion's  timid  meanness. 
But  it  made  the  fair  faces  of  women  without  beauty  in 
his  sight;  and  it  left  him  in  his  lofty  loneliness  without 
companionship  and  without  sympathy. 

The  passion  which  to  other  men  was  so  fair,  was  only 
to  him  as  the  deadly  poison  which  counterfeited  the  bread 
of  life. 

The  law  had  freed  him;  his  betrayer,  for  aught  he 
knew,  was  dead  ;  the  world  never  paused  to  recall  that 
early  tale  of  a  life  whose  maturity  it  honored  ;  but  he 
could  never  forget — he  could  never  live  as  though  this 
thing  had  never  been. 

And  its  remembrance  was  sharp  as  iron  in  his  soul  this 
night  ;  for  he  knew  that  he  loved  again. 

"Love,  love!  What  have  I  to  do  with  love?"  he 
mused.  "It  betrayed  me  in  my  youth  ;  it  can  only  fool 
me  more  fatally  still,  now  that  my  youth  is  gone  I" 

Yet,  while  his  reason  spoke  thus,  his  impulse  thirsted 
for  that  old,  sweet,  wild  folly  of  his  forgotten  years;  his 
heart  ached  for  all  the  long-lost  joys  so  free  to  every  com- 
mon fate;  his  passions  wakened  from  their  sleep,  and 


TIIE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         481 

longed  for  the  sunlight  that  lies  in  a  woman's  eyes,  for 
the  paradise  that  lies  in  a  woman's  lips;  his  solitude 
grew  colli,  cheerless,  unutterably  desolate. 

"Am  I  mad,  that  after  all  these  years  I  dream  thus?" 
he  asked. 

But  the  madness  was  upon  him  ;  and  ambition,  and 
renown,  and  honor,  and  the  tribute  of  men,  and  the  peace 
of  the  past,  all  grew  worthless  and  bitter,  and  even  as 
empty  mockeries  of  his  pain ;  for  in  his  loneliness  he  knew 
that  he  would  give  them  all,  only  once  more  to  lose  him- 
self in  the  delirious  sweetness  of  his  youth,  only  once 
more  to  murmur  in  a  woman's  ear — 

"I  love!" 


CHAPTER   XLIX. 

With  dawn  the  next  day  vast  throngs  poured  to  a 
small  house  beside  the  theater,  in  the  pearly  light  of  the 
spring  morning. 

There  was  only  a  dead  sailor  lying  there:  with  the 
look  upon  his  face  of  one  who  had  died  seeking  what  he 
could  never  find  on  earth  ;  and  with  a  little  knot  of  dried  sea- 
grasses,  tied  around  by  a  woman's  azure  ribbon,  lying  on 
his  broad,  brown,  emaciated  breast,  where  the  coarse  blue 
linen  of  his  shirt  fell  asunder.  Butthey  came  all  the  day 
through,  throng  upon  throng,  ever  succeeding  each  other 
into  the  chamber  where  he  lay  .-—-then  at  nightfall  they 
flocked  to  the  i  beater. 

"She  acts?"  they  asked;  and  they  were  answered, 
"  Yes,  she  acts." 

And  they  poured  in  faster  and  faster,  till  there  was  no 
standing-place  in  the  building,  and  the  waiting  crowds 
stretched  far  down  the  street. 

she.  herself,  sal  in  her  chamber,  with  the  diamonds  in 
her  bosom,  and  the  white  wings  on  her  shoulders,  Ber 
face  was  ashen-hued,  and  hereyes,  so  blue  and  laughing, 
had  a  startled  horror  in  them  as  of  one  who  sees  some 

41 


4S2  TRICOTRIN, 

ghastly  shape: — but  she  would  act.  She  was  thinking, 
with  her  cheek  resting  on  a  jeweled  fan  that  had  been  an 
emperor's  gift.  She  was  thinking, — this  thing  that  had 
no  thought. 

She  saw  the  yellow  level  shore  down  by  the  south  ;  the 
sea  glancing  in  the  sun;  the  rocks  covered  with  olive  and 
myrtle  and  aloe  ;  the  blue  distance  severed  here  and  there 
by  the  tall  slender  shafts  of  a  palm.  She  saw  a  child  of 
fifteen,  with  the  fairest  of  faces,  rosy  and  pearly  as  the  gum- 
cistus  blossoms ;  idling  away  all  her  days  under  the  brown 
shadow  of  a  boat,  or  dappling  her  pretty  feet  in  the  play 
of  the  surf;  listening  to  the  love  words  of  a  handsome 
black-browed  sailor,  half  seaman,  half  fisherman,  and 
laughing  as  she  took  with  graceful  greed  his  corals,  his 
shells,  his  pieces  of  silk,  his  little  golden  crucifix,  his  ear- 
rings of  silver. 

She  saw  a  cabin  high  up  among  the  luxuriance  of  Ri- 
viera vegetation  on  the  sunlit  slope  of  a  rocky  shore, 
where,  when  the  sails  of  the  lateeners  grew  smaller 
and  smaller  as  they  went  coasting  westward,  a  young 
girl,  full  of  petulant  discontent,  would  bite  her  scarlet  lips, 
and  ruffle  her  hands  among  her  yellow  hair;  and  wonder 
what  life  away  from  these  endless  seas  was  like  ;  and 
break  the  coral  necklet  of  her  husband's  gift  because  she 
was  so  weary  of  the  giver  ;  and  throw  the  beads  away, 
one  by  one,  into  the  water-spring  bubbling  from  the 
rock,  counting,  "Je  reste — je  m'en  vais! — je  reste — je 
m'en  vais!"  in  a  Gretchen-like  fashion  of  forecasting 
fate. 

She  saw  a  young  child  sleeping  in  a  cradle  shaped  like 
a  boat,  and  a  seventeen-year-old  mother  who  stooped  over 
it,  and  kissed  it  once  upon  the  mouth,  and  then  went  from 
it  slowly,  looking  her  last  farewell,  and  thinking,  "  Ge- 
rant  will  have  it  cared  for — the  child  will  not  be  harmed  ;" 
and  so  passed  swiftly  across  the  threshold  never  to  return; 
fleeing  faster  and  faster  as  she  heard  that  the  lateen  craft, 
returning,  were  in  sight. 

She  saw  all  these  things,  pictures  of  dead  years  ;  where 
she  sat  with  the  diamonds  glittering  in  her  bosom,  aud 
the  music  of  the  overture  floating  dreamily  into  her  cham- 
ber from  the  theater  beyond. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         483 

The  years  since  had  been  mirthful  and  glittering :  re- 
morse had  never  touched  this  light  mercurial  nature,  sin 
had  never  weighed  upon  this  volatile  skeptical  temper. 
She  had  done  well  for  herself,  she  thought;  she  had 
gained  riches,  and  fame,  and  lovers,  and  pleasures;  she 
had  had  thousands  of  days  of  delight,  thousands  of  nights 
of  triumph.  She  had  worn  the  jewels  kings  gave,  and 
she  had  heard  the  tumult  of  nations'  applause.  She  had 
feasted  her  sight  and  her  senses ;  she  had  reigned  in  her 
way  as  queens  reign.  She  had  laughed  on  all  her  life 
through  ;  and  had  drunk  the  secret  joys  of  the  passions. 
She  had  roved  as  the  butterflies  rove  ;  and  the  flowers 
had  all  borne  her  honey.  She  had  been  glad, — glad, — 
glad  ever;  as  things  soulless  and  sensuous  are.  And 
only  to-night  did  she  hear  the  hush  of  the  seas  in  the 
south ;  only  to-night  did  she  hear  the  sound  of  the  voice 
of  the  dead. 

The  man  sinned  against,  had  suffered,  dying  hard, 
through  a  score  of  years  ;  but  the  woman  who  had  sinned 
had  rejoiced  through  a  score  of  years  of  light,  and  of 
laughter,  and  of  life.  Yet  men  say  that  remorse  strikes 
the  balance  between  the  lives  that  endure  and  the  lives 
that  offend!  Remorse  1— thai  steals  in  for  one  hour  out 
of  a  million,  and  thrusts  one  thorn  amid  a  long  season 
of  roses,  and  furls  one  leaf  beneath  the  lied  of  pleasure, 
and  cries  "Lo!  I  am  Compensation!" 

There  was  a  deafening  shoul  without;  she  did  not  hem- 
it.  She  heard  only  the  music  of  the  Mediterranean  as  its 
waves  washed  upon  the  strand.   . 

They  came  to  her;  the  public  clamored  for  her;  the 
stage  Waited. 

She  rose,  with  the  startled  glazing  look  in  her  eyes  as 
of  one  who  beholds  a  horror  not  of  the  visible  world. 

Some,  more  merciful  than  the  rest,  bade  her  wait  ;  the 
penalty  could  be  but  forfeit.  As  they  spoke,  from  the 
body  of  the  house  there  ran  a  loud  hoarse  roar,  as  of  a 
lion  Bavage  for  its  prey;  the  Public  knows  no  pity. 

The  old  familiar  sound  aroused  her;  she  laughed,  toss- 
ing  some  more  gold  dusl  upon  her  sunny  hair: 

"Do  you  hear  it?  [t  is  a  beast  thai  musl  be  fed,  or  il 
will  tear.     I  sold  myself  to  it  long  ago.     Besides — half  a 


484  TRICOTRIN, 

million  francs! — I  cannot  lose  them,  though  I  have  spent 
them  in  a  clay  1" 

Then  with  an  airy  antelope-like  spring  she  bounded  on 
the  stage. 

The  theater  was  closely  filled  from  pit  to  roof.  They 
welcomed  her  with  a  tempest  of  applause. 

Its  director  smiled  content. 

"  The  piece  will  hold  the  stage  a  year,"  he  said  ;  for  he 
knew  that  the  Public  is  as  the  dragons  of  old  legends,  and 
asks  not  what  perishes,  so  that  only  its  greed  for  new  food 
be  appeased. 

And  she  played  on  : — her  gay  feet  gliding,  her  rich  song 
rising,  her  airy  laugh  echoing,  over  the  place  where  Jean 
Bruno  had  died. 


CHAPTER   L. 

In  the  late  spring-tide,  verging  upon  summer,  Paris 
was  once  more  rejoicing: — rejoicing  as  her  fashion  is, 
with  laughter  on  her  lips,  and  war  within  her  heart ;  with 
gold  eagles  gleaming  on  her  arches,  and  wealth  stagna- 
ting in  her  coffers;  with  flowers  blossoming  in  all  her 
corners,  and  exiles  barred  from  her  shores  for  the  dread 
crime  of  uttering  truth  ;  with  the  word  of  Peace  blazoned 
on  her  pyrotechnic  showers,  and  half  a  million  of  her 
soldiers  armed  to  the  teeth,  and  waiting  for  their  work. 
Rejoicing  with  infinite  gayety,  and  wit,  and  song,  and 
color;  rejoicing  with  cartridges  hidden  in  her  soldiers' 
accouterments,  that  the  hail  of  the  shot  might  sweep  clear 
her  boulevards,  if  amid  all  her  festivities  she  once  dared 
to  remember  that  Liberty  was  missing. 

Foreign  sovereigns  had  traveled  thither;  there  were 
feasting,  and  singing,  and  marshaling  of  troops  by  day, 
and  illuminating  of  streets  by  night,  and  all  the  various 
beguilements  and  intoxications  by  which  France  is  per- 
suaded to  forget  that  she  is  in  fetters. 

Under  the  green  aisles  and  avenues  of  her  pleasant 
places,  there  were  the  glitter  of  arms,  the  bright  hues  of 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         485 

flags,  the  flutter  of  banners,  the  sounds  of  ceaseless  music, 
the  constant  roll  of  drums  and  challenge  of  cannon,  and 
an  ever-flowing  sea  of  dainty  equipages  rolled  from  noon 
till  sunset  through  the  streets  and  squares,  and  under  the 
rich  foliage  of  the  woods  of  Boulogne. 

Among  those  thousands  of  carriages  there  was  one  which, 
for  its  mingled  pomp  and  elegance,  its  ermine,  and  its  velvet, 
and  its  gold,  its  fiery  fury  of  speed,  and  its  outriders  like 
a  guard  of  honor,  drew  all  eyes  upon  it:  and  the  mistress 
thereof,  lying  back  wTith  her  little  dog  beside  her,  was  so 
marvelously  fair,  that  the  beauty-loving  senses  of  the 
inflammable  crowds  made  them  rush,  and  press,  and  tear 
headlong  to  gaze  at  her  ;  and  uncover  their  heads  to  her, 
as  though  she  were  a  sovereign,  and  hail  her  with  a  sud- 
den spontaneous  acclamation.  She, — accustomed  to  that 
homage  of  the  mondrari  digito,  and  amused  by  its 
unwonted  manifestation  from  the  echoing  shouts  of  the 
throngs — smiled,  and  bowed  to  the  people,  as  though  she 
were  in  truth  their  empress,  and  looked  and  laughed  at 
the  two  persons  who  were  seated  opposite  her. 

"  I  am  dangerous  to  the  peace  of  France,"  she  said, 
with  light  amusement.  "  They  will  want  to  crown  me 
next !" 

As  she  spoke  her  horses  were  perforce  detained  by  the 
passage  of  cavalry,  going  at  full  speed,  with  their  lances 
gleaming  in  the  sun,  to  their  place  in  the  field  of  manoeu- 
vre ;  and  her  glance,  idly  straying  around,  over  the  heads 
of  the  closely-packed  multitude,  met  the  eyes  of  Tricotrin. 

He  alone  of  all  the  men  in  that  crowd  had  not  uncov- 
ered his  head  to  her  in  homage;  his  gaze  was  fastened 
on  her  with  a  look  in  which,  for  the  first  time  in  her 
whole  existence,  she  saw  gloom,  and  rebuke,  and  passion- 
ate scorn. 

Eer  gay  laugh  died  on  her  lips  ;  her  face  was  shadowed; 
over  her  there  stole  a  certain  fear. 

She  remembered  her  li;-st  entry  into  Paris; — she  re- 
membered  the  hour  when  he  bad  led  her  to  look  upon  the 
miseries  and  agonies  that  hid  beneath  the  brightness  of 
the  city's  surface  life ; — she  remembered  the  niuhl  when 
she  had  returned  from  the  dwelling  of  her  temptress,  ;i 
trembling,  tired,  heart-sick  child,  who,  but  for  him,  had 

41* 


486  TR1C0TRIN, 

perished  in  that  death  of  honor  and  of  conscience  which 
the  world  for  lack  of  a  better  word  calls  sin. 

Then  the  petulance  of  her  stung  pride  rose  and  ruled 
in  her. 

"  Must  I  ever  be  pursued  by  his  memory,  like  some 
murderer  by  a  ghost!"  she  thought,  with  cruel  merciless 
impatience ;  and  she  turned  her  eyes  from  him,  and 
laughed  in  all  her  airiest  and  most  negligent  levity,  and 
tossed  her  little  jeweled  sweetmeat-box  to  a  pifferaro's 
monkey,  in  the  wantonness  of  waste. 

Above,  in  one  of  the  white  spacious  mansions  fringing 
the  broad  road,  were  spectators,  filling  every  balcony  and 
casement  to  watch  the  court,  and  the  troops,  and  the 
equipages  of  fashion  and  of  rank  sweep  by  in  the  summer 
afternoon. 

In  the  window  immediately  above  her,  a  window,  vel- 
vet-hung, veiled  with  lace,  filled  with  flowers,  there  was 
a  gilded  balcony,  with  exotics,  and  china  vases,  and  stands 
for  parrots ;  a  balcony  hung  and  cushioned  on  such  days 
as  these  with  crimson  satin,  powdered  over  by  golden 
butterflies. 

With  her  arms  sunk  in  the  cushions'  ruby  depths,  and 
her  cherubic  face  leaning  on  them,  laughing  as  she  watched 
the  pageantry  go  by,  and  turning  now  and  then  to  tease 
a  parroquet,  was  the  woman  to  whom  that  gilded  balcony 
belonged,  of  whom  those  gilded  butterflies  were  the  self- 
chosen  emblem. 

The  throngs  as  they  moved  below  looked  up  often- 
times ;  and  laughed  also ;  and  called  out  to  each  other, 
"  There  is  Coriolis  !" 

For  that  night  when  they  had  asked  breathlessly, 
"Does  she  act?"  and  had  seen  her  act  as  gayly  as  ever 
on  the  stage,  where  the  fisherman  of  the  Riviera  bad 
dropped  dead,  had  endeared  her  afresh  to  the  people  of 
Paris  : — had  made  some  touch  of  that  seduction  of  assas- 
sination, which  so  strangely  beguiles  the  modern  mind,  lie 
for  them  in  those  serene  azure  eyes,  those  rosy  childlike 
lips,  of  their  play-idol. 

Coriolis,  leaning  there,  with  her  arms  on  her  cushions, 
and  her  hand  toying  with  a  knot  of  bright  roses,  looked 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         48? 

down,  and  noted  that  equipage,  checked  by  the  passage 
of  the  squadrons. 

"Those  horses  are  more  perfect  than  mine,"  thought 
the  actress,  whose  glory  it  had  ever  been  to  excel  the 
aristocrats. 

As  her  hand  hung  over  the  balcony  it  accidentally  let 
fall  one  of  the  roses.  It  was  caught  by  a  puff  of  wind, 
and  wafted  into  the  carriage.  Its  occupant  looked  up: 
perceived  whence  it  came — then  with  a  gesture  of  shud- 
dering aversion,  threw  the  rose  out,  to  fall  where  it  would 
among  the  multitude. 

Coriolis,  leaning  above,  saw  the  action,  and  saw  the 
gesture  of  loathing  which  accompanied  it. 

"  It  is  that  Duchess  de  Lira!"  she  thought,  while  her 
teeth  set  in  that  bitter  rage  which  is  ever  the  wrath  of 
such  mindless  and  soulless  things  as  she,  if  hate  once 
break  through  the  sunny  placidity  of  their  profound  ego- 
tism. "  She  flings  my  rose  away  as  though  the  plague 
were  in  its  petals.  She  is  as  beautiful  as  I  was  a  score 
of  years  ago.  She  has  ymith,  she  has  rank,  she  has 
splendor,  and  love,  and  pleasure,  and  triumph,  all  in  their 
prime.  Ah  !  how  sweet  it  would  be  if  the  days  of  the 
revolution  came  again,  and  we  could  make  her  come 
down  from  that  princely  chariot  to  ascend  the  tumbril  of 
the  guillotine  !" 

So  she  mused,  gazing  into  the  street  beneath,  with  her 
arms  imbedded  in  the  sofl  rose  satin.  A  vague  yet  acrid 
hatred  of  the  women  who  lived  in  honor  had  ever  moved 
her,  although  she  bad  ever  affected  to  hold  them  in  light 
and  insolent  contempt . 

The  cavalry  left  the  street  free;  the  carriage  dashed 
away  with  speed,  and  "■litter,  and  noise. 

Coriolis  quitted  her  balcony,  and  went  into  the  luxuri- 
ous chamber  it  adjoined,  and  pushed  her  hair  off  her 
temples,  and  stared  fixedly  at  herself  in  a  hand-mirror. 

"  I  hate  her  !    1  hate  her  !   She  has  youth  ;  and  I " 

She  flung  the  mirror  aside,  with  a  violence  that  shiv- 
ered to  atoms  its  glass  and  its  ivory  frame. 

The  onl\  vengeance  which  ever  overtakes  such  women 
as  she  stole,  with  slow  sure  steps,  upon  her. 


488  TRICOTRIN, 


CHAPTER  LI. 

In  the  house  where  Mere  Rose  once  lived  with  her 
linnet,  there  was  now  a  young  carver  of  ivory.  In  that 
little  ancient,  unfrequented  lane,  few  buyers  of  his  pretty 
toys  ever  wandered.  He  managed  to  live  by  letting  all 
his  rooms  to  other  people,  and  by  keeping  only  the  small 
shop,  and  the  dusky  den  behind  it,  for  his  fair  fond  wife, 
and  for  his  white  Liliputian  wares. 

The  former  carried  grace  and  beauty  even  into  the 
cobweb-hung,  pent-up  place,  where,  in  another  time,  the 
green-grocer  had  sold  his  herbs  and  vegetables,  and 
picked  out  his  largest  chestnuts  to  do  pleasure  to  the 
Waif  and  Stray  in  the  attic.  The  latter  gave  the  bright- 
ness of  her  own  youth,  and  of  her  own  still  unladed 
hopes  to  the  dark  prison-like  room,  where  she  sang  all 
day  long  like  a  bird. 

The  clay  after  the  great  military  fete,  Leon  Clerot,  the 
carver,  having  taken  down  his  shutters,  was  flecking  the 
dust  from  his  ivory  treasures  with  a  feather-brush,  and 
talking  meanwhile  to  his  wife  within.  She,  having 
brightened  and  lightened  her  chamber  with  the  old  happy 
grace  of  Gaulois  blood — with  a  ribbon  here,  an  atom  of 
gilding  there,  a  pot  of  common  flowers,  a  bough  of  blos- 
soming lime, — answered  him  gayly,  sewing  all  the  while 
at  one  of  his  coarse  gray  shirts. 

It  was  the  early  forenoon ;  and  both  started  as  they 
heard  the  roll  of  a  carriage,  and  saw  one  stay  at  their 
door.  In  that  out-of-the-world  by-way,  there  was  scarce 
anything  upon  wheels  seen,  save  the  baker's  cart,  or  the 
hot-chestnut  seller's  barrow. 

Leon  stood  stupefied  as  a  great  lady  entered  his  little 
domicile  ;  and  asked  the  cost  of  his  crucifixes,  his  prayer 
books,  and  his  miniature  cabinets. 

He  confused  the  prices  sadly  in  his  answers,  so  bewil- 
dered was  he  at  the  presence  of  such  a  patroness ;  but 
she  seemed  scarcely  to  attend.     She  chose  some  dozen 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         489 

ivory  works,  of  the  highest  value  in  his  collection  ;  paid 
for  them  with  two  big  rolls  of  gold,  which  dazzled  his 
sight,  and  made  his  hand  shake  as  he  took  them;  bade 
him  give  the  purchases  to  her  footman  waiting  without; 
and  then  lingered — looking  at  a  cross. 

'•  My  carving  must  be  very  wonderful  then,  it  seems  ?" 
thought  the  poor  Dieppois,  who  had  never  had  the  vanity 
to  think  so  before. 

"  You  live  here  with  your  wife  ?"  asked  his  visitant, 
suddenly. 

"  "We  do,  madam." 

"  You  have  a  good  trade?" 

"A  very  bad  one,  madam." 

"  You  must  be  very  wretched  ?" 

"  No,  madam  ;  we  are  happy." 

"  Happy  !" 

She  threw  her  glance  into  the  dusky  little  den  where 
the  Picardy  girl  was  sewing,  with  the  little  pot  of  com- 
mon flowers,  mary golds,  and  lavender,  and  mignonette  at 
her  elbow. 

"  Happy  !"  she  thought.  "  He  must  speak  in  derision 
of  his  own  misery  !" 

She  swept  up  to  the  girl  with  her  soft  languid  grace  of 
movement. 

"It  is  impossible;  your  husband  mocks  you.  You 
cannot  be  happy  here  ?" 

"  Oh  yes,  madam:  we  are  !" 

The  aristocrat  stood  and  gazed  at  her  with  supreme, 
incredulous,  musing  wonder. 

"  Happy  ?     But  how  ? — why  ? — on  what  ?" 

The  girl  smiled  softly,  with  a  flush  on  her  cheek. 

"Ah,  madam  !     We  love  one  another." 

Ber  visitant  moved  away,  will)  an  impatient  shadow 
on  her  fare  Love!  Must  this  word  meet  her  at  every 
turn'  musl  men  and  women  ever  have  the  audacity  and 
insincerity  to  pretend  thai  it  could  do  for  them  all  that 
her  rank,  and  riches,  and  celebrity,  and  conquest,  did  for 
her  ? 

"You  have  in  your  house  one  who  calls  himself  Trico- 
trin?"  she  asked  quickly  of  the  young  bride,  whose  lace 
beamed  brightly  as  she  answered  that  they  had. 


490  TRICOTRIX, 

"Is  he  within  now?" 

"I  cannot  tell,  madam.  He  is  scarce  ever  at  home. 
But  I  will  see." 

"  Do  so.  Tell  him  that  I —  Ask  him  to  have  the  good- 
ness to  come  hither." 

The  girl  went. 

The  great  lady  sat  alone  in  the  little  room,  indifferent 
how  strange  her  visit  might  appear  to  these  poor  people 

Clerot  remained  in  his  outer  shop,  gazing  at  his  gold, 
and  dreaming  of  all  possible  and  impossible  glories  that 
would  arrive  for  him  from  the  patronage  of  this  stranger, 
in  whom  he  believed  he  saw,  at  the  least,  some  foreign 
empress. 

He  had  been  but  a  brief  while  in  Paris  ;  he  was  inces- 
santly occupied  on  his  carving;  and  he  knew  few  of  the 
celebrities  of  the  city  either  by  sight  or  name. 

His  visitor  sat  gazing,  through  the  little,  dusty,  cheer- 
less place,  out  on  to  the  threshold  of  the  door;  where,  so 
many  years  ago,  she  had  once  sat  under  the  green-grocer's 
canopy  of  thyme,  and  marjory,  and  lemons,  and  grapes, 
and  had  listened  to  the  messenger  of  Coriolis. 

Ere  long  the  little  Dieppoise,  picturesque  in  the  sea-side 
dress  she  still  retained,  returned  and  approached  her  with 
shy  deference. 

"He  is  within,  madam,  for  a  miracle;  he  stayed 
awhile  with  old  Benoit,  the  cobbler,  who  is  ailing.  He 
will  be  here  at  once;" — then,  with  the  quick  tact  of  her 
nation,  she  glided  away  to  her  husband's  side,  and  left 
her  little  den  to  her  guest's  sole  use. 

At  that  moment  Tricotriu  entered;  with  gladness  and 
anxiety  at  once  in  his  eagerness  of  regard. 

"Is  there  aught  ill  with  you  ?"  he  asked,  hurriedly,  in 
a  low  murmur,  as  he  greeted  her.  "Speak  some  foreign 
tongue  ;  they  know  no  language  save  their  own." 

"You  think  some  ill  must  befall  me  ere  I  can  remem 
ber  you  !"  she  said,  bitterly,  in  Italian.  "Ah  !  I  merit  the 
satire  !  Nothing  has  happened  ;  but  I — I  was  near  you 
the  other  day  in  that  fearful  danger.  I  have  never  been 
at  ease  since  then.  And — yesterday  you  looked  so 
sternly  on  me ;  I  felt  afresh  the  whole  guilt  of  my  life  to 
you.     I  come  to  you  to  say — forgive  me!" 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         491 

All  the  uncertain  impulses,  the  unregulated  instincts, 
the  variable  emotions  of  her  better  nature  were  uttered 
in  the  words. 

She  would  live  again  as  if  this  repentance  had  never 
touched  her :  but  despite  this,  the  repentance  was  sincere 
and  ardent  while  it  lasted. 

His  voice  was  unsteady  as  he  answered  her  : 

"You  have  no  need  to  use  that  word  to  me.  You  had 
my  promise  long  ago  to  pardon  any  sin  that  you  might 
sin  against  me.  But — is  this  visit  prudent  ?  is  it  not  an 
error  against  your  usual  codes  and  caution  ?" 

"  Such  prudence  is  shameful  selfishness,  and  as  cow- 
ardly as  it  is  shameful  I"  she  murmured,  passionately. 
"  But,  here,  there  is  little  fear.  The  shop  is  an  artistic 
one,  such  as  I  often  visit.  My  servants  will  suspect 
nothing.  '  Suspect !'  Good  Heavens  ! — I  dare  speak  thus 
to  you,  in  this  house  where  I  lived  upon  your  charity — 
as  though  the  boundless  goodness  of  your  past  to  me 
were  some  dark  crime  which  needed  to  be  screened  and 
hushed  !" 

She  covered  her  eyes  with  her  hand  where  she  sat  lean- 
ing her  arms  on  the  table.  In  such  moments  as  these  all 
the  arrogance  and  dullness  of  her  pride  vanished,  and  all 
the  greatness  of  her  debt  was  alone  remembered. 

Yet — to  the  woman  who  through  long  years  had  only 
known  the  sweetness  and  the  omnipotence  of  riches,  rank, 
and  power,  it  was  unutterably  galling  to  recall  that  she 
had  once  dwelt  under  this  lowly  roof  a  child  of  the  peo- 
ple, happy  in  the  gifts  of  chestnuts  from  the  fruit-seller 
below,  happy  in  the  mirth  of  a  charlatan  with  his  noisy 
drum,  happy  in  wandering  out,  to  gaze  at  the  gas-lighted 
simps,  and  listen  to  the  bands  of  the  streets! 

If  there  had  only  been  some  means  whereby  she  could 
have  repaid  her  debt — some  gift  and  grace  such  as  sov- 
ereigns bestow  upon  those  who  loyally  have  served  them, 
— she  could  better  have  borne  the  memory  of  her  obliga- 
tion. She  could  have  succeeded  in  banishing  the  past, 
or  in  retaining  bul  such  remembrance  of  it  as  that  wiih 
which  such  sovereigns,  when  seated  on  their  thrones, 
recall  the  season  when  they  were  discrowned  wanderers 
and  exiles.     But  this  was  not  possible. 


492  TRICOTRIN, 

With  all  her  longing  to  give  some  magnificent  quit- 
tance of  her  debts,  with  all  her  warmer  and  holier  desire 
to  pour  some  of  her  golden  treasure  into  the  hands  which 
had  lifted  her  from  the  grave  in  her  infancy,  she  had  never 
ventured  to  offer  gifts  to  him  ;  she  had  never  ventured  to 
tender  to  him  a  portion  of  those  things  for  which  she  had 
abandoned  him. 

Unconsciously,  she  felt  that  it  would  be  as  vile  an  out- 
rage as  for  the  faithless  wife  to  tender  to  her  forsaken 
lord,  the  gold,  and  the  lands,  of  the  lover  for  whom  she 
had  deserted  him. 

"I  spoke  to  you  the  last  day  you  were  with  me  as  I 
had  no  right  to  speak,"  she  murmured,  her  eyes  shaded 
by  her  hand.  "I  should  have  remembered  that  you  had 
a  title  to  address  me  with  what  severity  you  would. 
Sometimes — I  wonder  that  you  do  not  denounce  me, 
before  all  the  world,  as  the  basest  and  weakest  thing  that 
ever  lived." 

"Why?"  he  said,  gently.  "I  should  have  no  justifica- 
tion, even  if  I  had  desire,  to  do  so.  When  we  toss  a 
bird  up  in  the  light,  free  to  come  or  to  go,  we  are  foolish 
and  unjust,  indeed,  if,  because  it  sail  away  from  us  on 
high,  we  cast  a  stone  after  it  to  bring  it  earthward  in 
punishment  for  its  abandonment  of  us.  You  were  just 
such  a  bird — you  chose  the  sunlight.  Well — so  best — 
you  would  never  have  borne  storms." 

"You  think,  then,  that  in  the  lack  of  riches  I  should 
have  been  delivered  over  to  evil !" 

"I  have  said:  I  think  you — a  woman,  nothing  less, 
nothing  more." 

"I  am  unlike  most  women  !" — involuntarily  she  turned 
and  glanced  at  the  little  broken  piece  of  mirror  that  hung 
above  the  stove. 

"In  your  beauty  you  excel  them — yes.  But  in  all  else 
you  are  most  essentially  feminine." 

She  played  impatiently  with  an  ivory  chain  that  she 
retained  in  her  hand.  She  had  conceded  his  right  to  say 
to  her  what  he  would  ;  but  none  the  less  did  she  resent 
the  total  absence  of  that  homage  which  was  as  the  very 
daily  bread  of  her  existence,  and  the  relegation  of  her  to 
the  vast  community  of  that  sex  which,  in  her  soul,  she 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  493 

disdained  with  all  the  glad  contempt  of  a  woman  whose 
friends  are  men,  and  who  is  independent  of  all  female 
sympathies. 

"Were  you  not  hurt  that  fearful  day  in  the  stone- 
worker's  court  ?"  she  asked  him  quickly.  "  OhHeavens  ! 
I  can  never  tell  you  what  I  felt " 

He  smiled:  if  she  heard  of  his  death  on  the  morrow, 
would  it  hold  her  hack  from  a  state-ball  at  night? 

"Hurt?  No.  I  am  never  hurt.  I  bear  a  charmed 
life,  I  think,  for  I  come  safely  out  of  strange  perils." 

"  But  you  may  rely  on  that  once  too  often?" 

"Well — if  I  do?  A  quick  death,  a  death  while  one  is 
of  use,  is  a  thing  to  be  desired.  The  only  thing  I  ever 
dread  is  slow  sickness  that  might  keep  me  long  in  dying. 
But  how  could  you  come  amid  so  rough  a  crowd,  and  in 
so  poor  a  quarter  ?" 

"  I  was  about  to  visit  Lelis." 

"  Lelis  !    My  Lord  of  Estmere's  new-found  Velasquez!" 

A  slight  flush  came  on  her  face  ;  his  eyes  watched  her 
with  earnest,  keen  scrutiny. 

"He  is  a  great  artist?"  she  said,  hurriedly. 

"Oh  yes!  He  has  been  a  great  artist.  for  twenty  years  ; 
only,  for  want  of  great  nobles  saying  so,  the  world  has 
never  seen  it!" 

"  There  is  a  use,  then,  at  least,  for  the  great  nobles  !" 

"You  fancy  I  deny  their  use?  You  are  wrong.  To 
do  so  is  to  sink  to  the  demagogue's  class-hatred.  I  am 
well  aware  of  how  much  art,  and  manners,  and  learning, 
the  grace,  and  the  scholarship,  and  the  refinement  of  life, 
all  owe  to  the  aristocracies  of  all  ages  !  It  is  as  illiberal 
to  hate  a  nobility  as  it  is  to  despise  a  people." 

"  In  a  democracy  they  would  call  you  an  aristocrat, 
then  ?" 

"Perhaps;  as  in  an  aristocracy  they  call  me  a  demo- 
crat. A  man  who  is  universally  tolerant  is  sure  to 
be  antagonistic  to  whatever  is  absolute  and  in  the  ma- 
jority. As  politics  stand,  we  dream  of  the  idealic  ison- 
Omy  of  the  Greek  vision  ;  and — find  no  better  reality  than 
a  military  despotism  or  a  mob-anarchy]  You  see  much 
of  Lord  Est  mere  ?" 

42 


494  TRICOTRIN, 

The  question  was  irrelevant  and  abrupt.  She  answered 
it  coldly : 

"  We  move  in  the  same  world  ;  I  meet  him  contin- 
ually." 

"  And  have  you  solved  the  questions  that  interested 
you — whether  attained  ambitions  and  public  honors  con- 
tent him  ? — whether  there  is  any  place  in  the  eminence  of 
his  life  for  the  weakness  of  passion  ? — whether  there  is 
any  chance  of  his  strength  and  his  peace  falling  earth- 
ward to  be  the  toys  of  a  woman  ?" 

Despite  all  her  self-command,  her  face  flushed,  her 
hands  played  hurriedly  with  the  ivory  chain.  His  words 
pierced  to  a  secret  which  she  had  striven  to  hide  even 
from  herself. 

"I  am  not  aware  that  such  questions  ever  occurred  to 
me,"  she  made  answer,  negligently  "I  scarcely  suppose 
their  investigation  would  repay  me." 

"  What !  You  admit  that  you  cannot  alter  his  indiffer- 
ence ?" 

The  words  stung  all  her  arrogant  vanity  into  being. 

"  Do  you  suppose  any  indifference  could  endure  one 
hour  longer  than  /  chose  to  grant  it  lease  of  life  !"  she  in- 
terrupted him,  with  all  her  most  superb  scorn  and  self- 
consciousness  in  arms. 

"  You  have  conquered  his,  then  ?" 

She  was  silent ;  her  eyes  clouded  with  anger,  her  hand 
beat  impatiently  on  the  low  deal  table.  She  was  truth- 
ful by  nature ;  and  she  knew  that  the  one  victory  alone 
lacking  to  her  was  victory  over  the  man  of  whom  they 
spoke. 

"  You  are  uncertain  ?"  he  said,  abruptly.  "And  in  that 
uncertainty  lies  his  chief  interest  for  you  !  Whether  his 
indifference  to  you  will  endure  I  cannot  tell;  he  is  mortal, 
and  you  have  more  than  mortal  seduction  in  you!  But 
watch  your  own  heart,  ere  you  attempt  to  play  with  his. 
If  you  have,  indeed,  the  soul  in  you  to  feel  the  force  and 
truth  of  his  nature,  it  will  be  well  for  you  that  you  have 
ever  known  him.  But  if,  in  the  mere  wantonness  of 
vanity,  or  the  mere  impulse  of  irritation  because  he  has 
not  fallen  before  you,  you  seek  to  change  his  coldness 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  495 

only  that  you  may  triumph  in  his  weakness,  you  will  do 
an  accursed  work,  an  unpardonable  sin." 

Her  delicate  teeth  set,  her  breath  came  quickly,  as  she 
heard  ;  she  looked  up  suddenly  in  his  eyes. 

"  Why  have  you  this  compassion  for  him  ?  I  have 
dealt  cruelly  and  inconstantly  enough  with  many ;  you 
never  interfered  to  avert  their  fate?" 

He  paused  a  moment ;  then  he  answered  her  with  an 
effort, 

"  There  are  not  many  such  men  as  he.  Moreover, — he 
has  been  once  forsaken  and  betrayed  ;  this  should  be 
sufficient  to  make  him  sacred  to  the  most  wanton  coquette 
that  ever  found  her  playthings  in  the  ruin  of  men's  lives." 

"You  are  right,"  she  said  gently — and  asked  no  more. 

"You  Avill  leave  him  untempted,  then  ?" — there  were 
vivid  eagerness,  imperious  authority,  in  the  demand. 

A  soft  smile,  half  cruel,  half  tender,  played  about  her 
mouth  ;  her  glance  stole  away  once  more  to  the  mirror. 

"Is  that  wholly  in  my  power  to  promisor'  she  said, 
as  she  rose. 

He  knew  all  the  conscious  power  which  was  uttered  in 
the  vain-glorious  question;  and  he  knew  that  it  was  as 
idle  to  ask  her  to  forego  its  exercise  as  it  were  to  ask  a 
brilliant  gerfalcon  to  forego  her  quarry.  An  impulse 
woke  in  him  to  tell  her  of  what  race  her  first  young  lover 
had  come ;  to  tell  her  that  it  had  been  the  son  of  Est- 
mere  for  whom  she  had  been  tempted  into  the  house  of 
Coriolis.  But  he  held  his  peace;  it  could  avail  nothing 
save  to  disquiet  her  and  to  alarm  her;  it  could  only  serve 
to  make  her  more  likely  to  betray  herself  whenever  the 
time  should  come  that  she  should  meet  again  the  "Prince 
Faineant"  of  her  childish  fancies. 

"  Wholly  in  vour  power?"  he  answered  her.  "  Mav  be  ' 
it  is  not  so.  You  have  the  charms  that  befool  men.  Ibtt 
all  that  I  say  is,  spend  your  seductions  elsewhere,  sate 
your  passion  for  triumph  otherwise  than  in  misleading, 
and  mocking,  and  wounding  a  noble  nature  thai  has 
already  been  branded,  through  too  frank  a  faith  in  the 
honor  of  women,  lie  has  stung  your  pride  by  his  neg- 
lecf — I  know! — deadlier  crime  no  man  can  have  against 
such  a  trifler  as  you.     But,  if  there  exist  in  you  one  lin- 


490  TRICOTRIN, 

gering  touch  of  the  nature  that  once  lived  in  the  child 
that  I  cherished,  you  will  have  mercy  enough,  purity 
enough,  generous  strength  enough,  in  you  to  renounce 
one  effort  for  triumph,  to  abstain  from  one  indulgence  of 
vanity,  to  hold  back  your  hand  from  thrusting  fresh 
thorns  into  the  old,  deep,  cruel  wounds  of  a  husband's 
dishonor.  I  have  asked  nothing  of  you  since  the  years 
that  we  parted.  I  ask  this  now.  Do  with  others  as 
you  will.     But  spare  him." 

Ere  she  could  answer,  he  had  turned  away  and  gone 
from  her,  and  passed  up  the  dim,  narrow  stairway,  with- 
out farewell. 

She  stood,  moved,  silent,  wondering,  with  a  mist  of 
unshed  tears  gathering  over  her  haughty  eyes.  All  the 
latent  tenderness  in  her  had  awakened  at  his  words ;  for 
— she  loved  the  man  for  whom  he  had  pleaded  thus. 

"  He  and  Estmere  are  strangers!"  she  mused.  "  Stran- 
gers— and  yet  the  one  can  feel,  and  can  sue,  for  the  other 
like  this  !  A  time  there  must  have  been  when  their  lives 
touched,  and  were  the  lives  of  friends  ?    And  yet " 

And  yet  he  had  said  this  was  not  so;  and  she  knew 
well  that  no  lie  ever  tainted  his  lips. 

She  went  to  her  carriage,  giving  orders  to  the  carver, 
Clerot,  that  in  twelvemonths'  time  he  could  scarce  have 
space  to  execute;  and,  as  she  drove  through  the  streets 
in  the  bright  noonday,  her  face  was  pale,  and  grave,  and 
troubled. 

Tricotrin  went  to  the  little  dull  chamber,  high  in  the 
roof,  where  the  old  cobbler  lay,  slowly  dying  ;  and  he 
read  aloud  the  gayest  wit  of  the  journals  of  irony  and  of 
caricature,  till  the  cobbler,  with  the  Gaulois  temper  still 
in  him,  laughed  again  and  again  where  he  was  stretched 
'  on  his  bed,  and  half  forgot  his  suffering,  and  never 
dreamed  that  his  friend,  who  thus  brought  the  mercy  of 
mirth  and  oblivion  to  his  couch  of  torture,  had  a  bitter- 
ness in  his  own  soul  surpassing  that  of  death. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  497 


CHAPTER   LII. 

A  few  weeks  later,  one  sweet  moonlit  night  in  the 
month  of  roses,  a  man  and  woman  wandered  through  the 
orange  aisles  of  the  Palace  of  the  Abdication.  They 
were  alike  guests  of  the  court,  and  had  strayed  some- 
what away  from  the  torchlight  curee,  and  the  illumined 
waters,  and  the  gardens  and  galleries  fdled  with  the 
pomp  of  imperial  festivity. 

"You  will  come  to  Villiers  ?"  be  asked,  bending  low 
his  stately  head ;  he  had  spoken  of  her  approaching  de- 
parture, and  had  entreated  for  her  presence  at  the  sum- 
mer gathering  which  was  about  to  fill  his  own  chateau. 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  startled,  wistful,  doubting 
look,  and  hesitated  some  moments  ere  she  answered. 

"  To  Villiers  V  she  said,  at  length,  with  a  strange  soft- 
ness and  sadness  in  her  voice.  "  To  Villiers  ?  Yes — I 
will  come  to  Villiers  " 

And  he,  noting  that  strange  intonation,  that  unusual 
emotion,  thought,  in  a  dreaming  wonder,  that  made  his 
pulses  beat  with  the  fever-heat  of  youth — 

"  Is  it  possible  that  my  love  would  ever  be  welcome 
to  her  ?" 


CHAPTER   LIIL 

TriE  park-gates  of  Villiers  were  opened  wide  in  a 
mellow  summer  evening;  carriage  after  carriage  passed 
through  them,  bearing  guests  to  the  greal  chateau. 
Torches  flared,  though  the  sun  was  scarce  set,  the  silken 
standard  flowed  broad  upon  the  breeze,  the  wide  courts 
were  filled  with  princely  pomp,  its  lord,  long  absent,  had 
of  late  returned. 

12* 


408  TRICOTRIN, 

At  the  lodge  a  brown-eyed  woman  stood,  smiling  to 
see  the  equipages  sweep  by,  and  holding  back  the  too 
eager  delight  of  her  youngest  born — a  ruddy  boy  of  but 
a  few  years  old.  They  were  people  of  a  sunny,  loyal 
temper  in  the  little  gate-house,  and  had  no  grudging 
envy  of  the  "  aristocrats."  They  liked  the  pageantry  and 
the  vivacious  life  that  came  with  these  gatherings  of  the 
"  noblesse." 

"  Look,  look,  mere! — quick!"  whispered  an  elder  daugh- 
ter of  some  fifteen  years.  "Paulin  told  me  I  should  know 
her,  because  he  would  put  the  ermine  rug  in  her  carriage 
and  sables  in  all  the  others.  Look !— that  must  be  the 
Duchess  de  Lira!" 

The  mother  looked,  shading  her  eyes  from  the  glare  of 
the  sunset  and  torchlight. 

The  horses  slackened  their  pace  as  they  came  through ; 
the  great  lady,  of  whose  advent  there  had  been  much 
converse  among  the  household  of  Villiers,  for  the  fame 
of  her  beauty  had  spread  even  through  the  provinces, 
leaned  slightly  forward,  and  stretched  her  hand  with  a 
coin  to  the  little  boy,  looking  into  his  parent's  face. 

"You  are  well  here,  and  happy?"  she  asked. 

There  was  a  great  sweetness  in  her  voice  as  she  asked 
the  simple  question. 

"Ah,  yes,  madam — thank  God!"  the  mother  answered 
to  the  unlooked-for  mark  of  interest,  as  the  carriage  dashed 
on  through  the  avenue. 

"What  hast  thou,  Raoul?"she  said  to  the  child.  "Holy 
Mary!  what  a  great  gold  piece.  She  must  have  a  tender 
soul — that  proud  duchess." 

"And  how  beautiful  she  is!"  sighed  her  daughter. 
"Paulin  was  right."  (Paulin  was  an  equerry,  who  had 
been  in  Paris  with  his  lord.)  "Paulin  says,"  the  girl 
murmured  on,  "that  she  will  be  chatelaine  here  ere  long. 
Think  you,  mere,  it  is  likely  ?" 

"How  can  we  tell?"  rejoined  her  mother  absently. 

Awhile  later,  as  she  moved  to  and  fro,  getting  his 
evening  meal  for  her  husband,  who  had  come  from  his 
labor  in  the  gardens,  he  asked  her  what  made  her  so 
grave  and  so  silent. 

"I  do  not  know,"  she  said,  with  a  smile.     " Dost  thou 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  499 

remember  at  all,  Valentin,  that  pretty  child  that  lived 
with  the  old  Virelois,  and  died,  they  say,  far  away?" 
"Trieotrin's  Waif?    Ay — what  of  her  ?" 
"  Naught  of  her.     But  that  great  lady  had  a  look  of 
her  in  her  face,  and  set  me  thinking  of  her — the  pretty, 
nameless  thing — that  is  all." 

Valentin  laughed,  a  man's  good-natured  contemptuous 
laugh  at  a  woman's  imaginations. 

"The  Duchess  de  Lira  like  that  little  foundling!  Ah, 
wife,  what  a  woman  thou  art  for  fancies!  Do  not  tell 
them  aloud,  for  they  say  that  our  lord  will  wed  with 
her." 

"I  have  no  fancies  to  tell,"  said  Ninette,  giving  him 
his  salad.  "She  made  me  remember  the  child — that  is 
all.  It  is  the  dark  eyes  and  the  light  hair,  I  dare  say. 
The  child  had  them." 

Meantime,  in  the  great  vaulted  hall  of  the  chateau,  the 
Duchess  de  Lira  was  welcomed  by  her  host  beneath  his 
roof. 

She  answered  him  with  her  accustomed  grace  and 
ease;  she  smiled  on  him  with  her  accustomed  witchery 
and  eloquence;  she  conversed  lightly  of  the  trifles  of  her 
travel ;  she  looked  in  his  face  without  a  fear  in  her  eyes 
or  a  (lush  on  her  cheek  for  that  bygone  time,  so  ever 
present  to  her  sight,  and  so  deeply  buried  from  his ;  but 
when  she  reached  her  own  chamber  she  bade  her  attend- 
ants, with  imperious  haste,  leave  her  alone — she  was  fa- 
tigued— she  desired  rest.  And,  locked  in  her  solitude, 
she  flung  herself  upon  her  couch,  and  sobbed  bitterly. 

The  place  moved  her  with  strange  passion.  The  dead 
days  thronged  like  "hosts  around  her.  She  felt  guilty 
ami  ashamed,  and  filled  with  a  vague  terror. 

If  the  pictured  walls,  the  storied  chambers,  the  dumb 
statues  could  find  voices,  they  could  tell  their  lord  that 
the  woman  whom  he  welcomed  as  nobles  receive  their 
monarchs,  had  once  been  a  nameless,  penniless,  alms-fed 
child,  wandering  wilh  his  peasants  in  his  halls! 

"But  1  have  greatness;  Ihai  is  no  lie  I"  she  thought,  as 
she  rose  and  gazed  at  herself  in  those  mirrors,  whose 
solace  never  failed  with  Btormy  longing  and  disquiet  at 
her  heart.     "I  have  fulfilled  my  dream  ;  I  have  borne  out 


500  TRICOTRIN, 

my  ambitions ;  I  return  with  riches  and  honors,  and  tri- 
umphs in  my  hands.  I  have  won  my  empire,  and  I  am 
crowned.  Men  wear  their  diadems  forgetful  of  their 
pasts :  why  may  not  1  ?  I  am  his  equal ;  what  need  to 
remember  that  any  other  time  has  ever  been  ?  My  king- 
dom is  real :  as  real  as  his!" 

Then  she  smote  the  tears  from  her  eyes,  and  smiled  at 
her  own  loveliness,  and  called  her  tire-woman,  and  bur- 
nished to  threefold  brilliancy  the  weapons  of  her  charms ; 
and  descended  the  great  staircase — proud,  radiant,  im- 
perial, conscious  that  she  was  beyond  all  rivalry. 

His  hand  shook  slightly,  and  his  grave  weary  eyes 
softened  with  a  new  light — the  light  of  his  lost  youth — 
as  he  bowed  before  her,  and  led  her  to  the  banqueting- 
chamber,  wThere,  in  the  autumnal  day  of  a  long- forgotten 
time,  the  song  of  the  Diogene  had  echoed  from  the  forests 
on  his  ear,  and  the  great  man  in  his  solitude  had  envied 
the  careless  singer. 


CHAPTER  LIV. 

"It  is  you!  Ah!  how  glad  we  shall  all  be!"  cried 
the  wife  of  Valentin,  in  her  lodge-house,  dropping  to  the 
ground  in  her  joy,  a  kirtle  full  of  purple  plums  which  she 
had  just  gathered  from  her  sunny  south  wall.  Her  wel- 
come was  given  to  Tricotrin,  as  he  came  across  her 
threshold  in  the  fresh  hour  of  earliest  day. 

"  It  is  like  a  summer  rain  after  drought  to  see  you  here 
again.  You  come  so  seldom  now,  and  the  people  all 
hunger  for  you,  ever,"  she  pursued,  laying  her  hands  on 
his  knapsack,  and  sending  her  children  in  all  directions 
to  get  eggs  from  the  hen-house,  fresh  honey,  fresh  fruits, 
and  fresh  salad,  to  do  honor  to  his  breakfast,  with  many 
lamentations  that  her  husband  should  be  already  gone  off 
to  his  work  in  the  gardens,  and  should  thus  miss  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  the  man  he  most  loved  and  revered. 

In  the  later  years,  Tricotrin  had  returned  at  intervals 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  501 

to  his  once-cherished  vine  country;  but  still  be  came  far 
more  rarely,  and  for  far  briefer  sojourn  than  of  old. 

The  old  familiar  places  had  a  cruelty  in  their  Deauty,  a 
sting  in  their  peace.  And  there  was  little  save  pain  to 
be  found  at  the  river-home  which  he  kept  for  grand'mere 
and  the  swallows.  She  derived  no  solace  from  his  pres- 
ence, she  understood  naught  that  he  said,  she  would  only 
grasp  his  arm  with  a  hard  nervous  grip,  and  look  straight 
in  his  eyes,  with  a  look  that  made  his  heart  ache,  and 
mutter  in  his  ear,  "Will  she  never  come  back?  will  she 
never  come  back  ?" 

Of  the  lost  child,  the  people  never  spoke  to  him.  Most 
believed  her  dead;  some  believed  that  worse  than  death 
had  befallen  her ;  all  understood,  that  of  her  they  must 
not  question  him. 

lie  accepted  the  eager  hospitalities  of  Ninette,  and 
took  a  seat  in  the  deep  embrasure  of  the  wide  oak-lined 
window;  and  listened  to  her  rapid  babble  of  things  that 
had  chanced  in  the  country-side  since  last  he  had  been 
seen  there;  and  glanced,  ever  and  again,  as  he  drank  his 
coffee,  at  the  blazoned  arms  and  the  gilded  coronet  with- 
out on  the  great  gateways. 

"  How  is  it  with  grand'mere  V  he  asked  her,  in  one  of 
the  pauses  betwixt  her  gossipries. 

Ninette  shook  her  still  comely  head. 

"Ah,  you  see  it  is  so  far,  I  can  rarely  go  myself, — 
never,  indeed,  unless  I  have  something  to  take  down  the 
river.  When  one  has  children! — But,  indeed,  one  can 
do  her  no  good,  and  she  knows  no  one  now.  Manon 
Rixe  saw  her  last  week — so  she  stopped  her  mule  to  tell 
me, — and  Manon  thinks  she  is  breaking  fast.  You  see, — " 
she  hesitated,  she  was  about  to  add  that  grandniere  had 
never  recovered  the  loss  of  the  ch  Id;  but  she  changed 
her  phrase, — "you  see  she  is  wonderfully  old  ;  and  when 
people  have  been  so  strong  up  to  that  age,  they  break  all 
;ii  once — so  !" 

And  she  cracked  a  rotten  stick  sharply  across  her 
knee,     lie  was  silent. 

"She  ha-  everything  she  can  wish  for,"  pursued  the 
wife  of  Valentin,  in  whose  eyes  creature-comforts  made  a 
paradise  upon  earth.     "  She  is  well  oil', — you  are  so  good 


502  TRICOTRIN, 

to  her.  It  has  been  a  brave,  tough,  tender  soul, — hers. 
Those  people  that  were  children  in  that  old  revolutionary 
time,  have  something  in  them  greater  than  we  have,  I 
think." 

"  They  may  well  have.  The  Marseillaise  was  their 
cradle-song." 

"  I  sing  that  to  my  children,  when  the  doors  are  shut 
at  night,"  whispered  Ninette. 

She  had  something  of  republican  blood  in  her,  and  her 
great-grandfather  had  been  slain  by  a  Black  Brunswicker 
in  Champagne-Pouilleuse. 

"  Aye  ?  Hymns  forbad  at  noonday,  are  ever  so  sung 
at  night;  and  oftentimes,  what  at  noon  would  have  been 
a  lark's  chant  of  liberty,  grows  at  night  to  a  vampire's 
screech  for  blood!"  he  murmured.  "  They  are  gay  at 
your  chateau  up  yonder?" 

"  Gay,  indeed,"  assented  Ninette,  who, — with  all  her 
touch  of  republicanism,  liked  her  own  aristocrats.  "  The 
English  lord  always  has  kept  a  splendid  house  whenever 
he  has  been  here  :  though  he  look  so  grave,  and  so  tired, 
I  do  not  think  it  can  pleasure  him  much." 

"  He  is  well  loved  by  all  your  people  ?" 

"He  is  so.  He  is  of  few  words,  and  proud ;  but  he  is 
generous  and  just." 

"  His  son  is  not  here  ?" 

"  No.  The  young  lord  is  never  here.  Of  Estmere 
himself  they  do  say " 

"Say  what?" 

"  Well — have  you  ever  seen  a  wonderful  creature  whom 
they  call  the  Duchess  de  Lira  ?" 

"  I  have  seen  her.     Why  ?" 

"  She  is  staying  up  at  the  chateau.  She  is  a  very  great 
lady,  is  she  not?" 

"  She  is  of  high  station.     What  is  it  they  say  ?" 

"  Oh,  it  may  be  nonsense.  I  do  not  see  how  we  can 
tell.  But  they  do  say  that  my  lord  will  wed  with  her. 
Paulin,  the  equerry,  told  us  first;  and  now  every  one  is 
repeating  it.  It  may  well  be  :  she  is  most  lovely,  and  his 
horse  is  always  beside  hers  as  they  ride  through  the  gates. 

Tricotrin  put  out  his  hand,  and  thrust  the  half-shutter 
against  the  window. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  503 

"  The  light  is  strong,"  he  muttered  ;  and  he  continued 
his  meal,  sitting  backward  in  the  shadow,  in  silence. 

"  It  maybe  folly,"  continued  Ninette.  "  I  know  nothing 
of  her,  of  course ;  she  spoke  gently  to  me,  and  she  gave 
little  Raoul  a  great  gold  piece.  But  they  do  say  that 
she  will  only  break  his  heart  if  ever  she  gets  it.  She 
loves  to  see  men  mad  for  her,  they  tell  me.  But  it  may 
be  only  gossip,  very  likely.  I  remember  in  the  old  time, 
when  my  lord  was  so  much  here,  before  he  went  to  that 
kingship  in  the  east,  they  were  always  saying  he  would 
marry  this  princess  or  the  other  when  the  great  ladies 
visited  at  the  chateau.  People  must  talk.  Do  you  like 
that  shutter  shut  ?    You  were  always  so  fond  of  the  sun." 

She  was  absent  awhile,  busied  in  rescuing  a  pumpkin 
from  the  too  vigorous  play  of  her  four-year-old  son,  on 
the  strip  of  turf  outside  her  door.  When  she  came  back 
she  stood  silent,  with  her  hands  in  her  sides  a  little  while, 
surveying  her  guest;  then  she  spoke  very  softly  : 

"  Tricotrin — I  wonder  if  you  would  be  angered  if  I 
asked  you  something  ?" 

"I  am  not  likely  to  be.     Try." 

"Well — did  you  ever  see  in  that  great  duchess  a  look 
of  that  pretty  dead  thing  you  were  so  good  to, — of  the 
child  Viva?" 

"  There  is  a  look — yes." 

"Ah!  I  am  glad  to  hear  you  say  that.  Valentin 
mocked  at  me.  There  is  an  enormous  difference,  of 
course  ;  but  there  is  a  look " 

"Valentin  is  the  wiser  of  the  two,"  said  Tricotrin,  as 
he  rose  from  the  table,  with  a  smile.  "  A  great  lady 
would  be  ill  pleased  to  be  likened  to  a  foundling.  And 
now,  farewell.  I  will  come  back  at  evening  to  see  your 
husband.  For  the  present  I  must  go  visit  grand'mere, 
since  you  have  heard  it  is  worse  with  her." 

Ami  lie  wmt,  dropping  into  Raoul's  hands,  as  he 
passed,  a  toy  he  had  taken  out  of  his  knapsack— a  clock- 
work cuirassier,  who  went  through  wondrous  evolutions, 
and  completely  eclipsed  the  pumpkin. 

An  ingenious  toyseller  and  mechanist  had  pressed  it 
upon  him  a  few  days  earlier,  as  the  sole  return  it  was 
in   his    power   to    render   for   services  done,    on    a    hot 


504  TRICOTRIN, 

summer  night,  to  him  in  a  fire  that  had  broken  out  on 
his  premises. 

"  Take  it,  I  pray  you,"  had  urged  the  toymaker.  "  It 
is  a  clever  puppet,  and  you  can  bestow  it  on  some  child  ; 
— you  always  like  to  give  pleasure." 

And  Tricotrin  had  put  it  in  his  knapsack,  knowing  that 
>to  refuse  were  to  deal  pain. 

Ninette  stood  thoughtfully  regarding  his  shadow  as  he 
lengthened  on  the  sunlit  road.  It  was  the  first  time  he 
had  ever  spoken  of  his  lost  Waif. 

"  If  the  child  should  not  be  dead  after  all !"  she  mused  ; 
and  she  remembered  that  the  belief  in  this  death  had 
gone  abroad  alone  from  what  the  old  grand'mere  had 
said,  and  that  Tricotrin  himself  had  never  once  spoken 
of  her  fate. 


CHAPTER   LY. 


In  the  indolent  summer  day,  some  hour  or  more  ere 
the  fall  of  evening,  a  riding  party  paced  slowly  through 
one  of  the  wooded  valleys  beyond  Villiers. 

They  were  above,  on  a  steep  rocky  road  that  wound 
down  toward  the  deeply-scooped  dell,  where  a  little 
hamlet  lay ;  unseen  under  its  dense  chestnut  and  syca- 
more cover,  and  only  betrayed  by  its  roofs  thrust  up  here 
and  there,  gray  and  soft  in  hue  with  the  lichens,  or  red 
with  their  tiles  that  glowed  under  the  leaves,  bright  as 
poppies  underneath  ferns. 

The  horses  were  somewhat  tired;  the  dogs  paused  to 
drink  thirstily  from  the  hillside  brooks  ;  the  riders  went 
downward  over  the  dangerous  picturesque  way,  with 
that  pleasant  sense  of  languor,  and  content,  which  comes 
from  such  slight  fatigue  as  only  makes  the  ear  more 
grateful  for  the  soothing  sound  of  falling  water,  and  the 
eye  more  grateful  for  the  perfect  rest  of  dark  cool  green. 

Their  voices  sank  ;  their  laughter  was  hushed;  through 
the  odorous  scent  of  the  dying  day,  heavy  with  the  open- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         505 

ing  buds  of  night-blossoming  flowers,  and  t lie  crushed 
heart  of  wild  fruits,  fallen  overripe,  they  rode  on  silently. 

As  they  went,  from  the  valley  far  down  below  there 
rose  the  faint  echoes  of  music,  as  a  song  rises  up  from 
the  leafy  hedge- sheltered  nest  of  a  bullfinch.  Aerial, 
subdued,  exquisitely  delicate,  it  mingled,  as  its  notes 
ascended,  with  all  the  sweet  sounds  of  the  earth;  the 
brook's  bubble,  the  leaves'  murmur,  the  chime  of  sheep's 
bells,  the  singing  of  grasshoppers ;  blending  with  all, 
broken  by  none. 

Involuntarily  they  checked  their  horses  ;  and  listened, 
midway  down  the  descent. 

"  A  French  Rubezahl !"  said  one. 

"An  Orpheus  of  the  Loire,"  added  another. 

"  Hush,  hush  !"  said  the  foremost  of  them.  "  It  must 
be  the  Straduarius  !" 

"Whose?"  they  asked 

She  struck  her  whip  with  a  gesture  of  annoyance 
against  the  bole  of  the  tree  she  passed. 

"A  Straduarius,  or, — some  other  perfect  violin.  One 
can  tell  thai  even  here." 

"  But  you  said  the  Straduarius,  madam?  Who  is  the 
marvelous  player?" 

"  1  have  no  telescope  to  ascertain  !  We  shall  see  in 
the  valley." 

Her  host  riding  by  her  side,  looked  at  her  in  a  certain 
perplexity. 

"It  is  Tricotrin,  I  will  wager,"  said  the  Marquis  de 
Valdanha  farther  behind.  "Who  else  would  play  so  to 
those  villagers  at  our  feet?" 

"Tricotrin?"  murmured  Estmere,  "Tricotrin?  I  have 
heard  that  word  of  late " 

"Who  has  not?"  laughed  the  other. 

"  Tricotrin  ?"  repeated  Estmere,  thoughtfully.    "That 

is  DOJ  a  real  name  ?" 

"  Is  it  not  ?  Et  is  one  the  people  love  as  they  love  the 
Marseillaise.  He  is  well  known  hereabouts:  you  mu-t 
have  met  with  him." 

"I  have  done  so.  He  is  an  ally  of  L^lis  A  man  of 
peculiar  life,  if  I  were  told  arighl  ?" 

"A  man  with  the  wit  of  a  Piron,  the  politics  of  a  Jean 

43 


506  TRICOTRIN, 

Jacques,  the  eloquence  of  a  Mirabeau,  the  Utopia  of  a 
Vergniaud ! — a  man  with  the  head  of  a  god  and  the 
blouse  of  a  workman,  the  brain  of  a  scholar  and  the  life 
of  a  scamp,  the  soul  of  a  poet  and  the  schemes  of  a 
socialist. " 

"I  see!" 

"  A  cosmopolitan " 

"  That  is — speaks  the  tongues  of  all  nations,  and  keeps 
the  laws  of  none !" 

"A  character " 

"  Who  has  lost  the  fact  ere  he  gains  the  title  1" 

"An  universal  genius " 

"  Who  is  of  equally  universal  inutility  !" 

"A  republican " 

"Who  finding  labor  distasteful  preaches  the  commu- 
nity of  goods,  and  the  equalization  of  riches  !  Thanks  : 
you  have  sketched  me  the  man  in  four  phrases." 

"And  you  have  slandered  him,  my  lord,  in  four  epi- 
grams !"  said  the  Duchess  de  Lira  beside  him,  interrupt- 
ing their  converse. 

He  glanced  at  her  with  increasing  surprise. 

"  I  would  slander  no  one,  even  in  jest,"  he  said  gravely. 
"  You  know  this — musician  ?" 

"  I  know  something  of  him, — all  France  does,"  she  an- 
swered him  ;  and  the  woman  of  the  world  felt  her  cheek 
redden  and  her  conscience  smite  her,  at  the  first  evasion  of 
truth  made  to  the  first  man  she  loved.  Such  semi-false- 
hoods she  and  all  her  kind  used  by  the  score  every  day, 
dainty  masks  in  the  masked  ball  of  life  ;  but — to  lie,  to 
touch  the  shadow  of  a  lie,  with  him  ?  She  felt  as  though 
she  had  sinned  against  him. 

"  I  must  know  something  also,  since  he  has  interest  for 
you,"  he  said,  with  a  certain  wonder  still  on  him  as  to 
what  this  interest  could  be.  "  I  confess  to  have  no  spe- 
cial regard  in  usual  for  enthusiasts  and  eccentrics  ;  the 
brass  slipper,  abandoned  on  the  brink  of  the  volcano  of 
originality,  is  commonly  typical  of  the  forsaken  common 
sense  that  is  left  behind  in  the  plunge  of  your  Empedocles 
of  Fanaticism !  And  the  man  who  turns  his  back  on  the 
world,  has  generally  seen  the  world's  back  ere  he  does 
so!" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         50 T 

"You  are  unjust,"  she  said,  curtly.  "It  is  precisely 
these  men  who  free  the  world!" 

"  What!  Must  one  have  rent  the  decencies  of  moral 
order  ere  one  can  cut  the  withes  of  illiberal  thought?" 

"  That  is  a  satire ;  not  an  argument.  Does  he  of  ne- 
cessity violate  moral  order,  because  he  breaks  through 
social  conventionalities  ?  Yours  is  an  assumption,  not  a 
deduction." 

"  Possibly  :  but  I  confess  that  I  fail  to  see  the  inevita- 
ble relationship  of  a  coat  out  at  elbows  with  a  mind  out 
of  the  common  ;  and  I  do  not  admire  emancipators,  whose 
first  emancipated  captives  are  their  own  passions  and  fan- 
cies from  the  limbo  of  law  1" 

"  There  spoke  all  the  prejudices  of  your  Order  !" 
"  Prejudices  in  favor  of  social  decencies? — they  are  like 
prejudices  in  favor  of  cleanliness; — beggars  marvel  that 
we  care  for  our  baths,  but  is  that  an  argument  against 
ablution?" 

"  Prejudices! — because  you  assume  that  a  man  who  is 
eccentric  must  needs  be  likewise  immoral ;  as  you  would 
assume,  I  suppose,  that  a  man  who  is  poor  in  purse  must 
of  necessity  bo  also  filthy  in  person.  I  do  not  perceive 
the  inevitable  connection." 

The  path  had  suddenly  narrowed  so  that  but  one  rider 
could  pass  at  a  time  ;  her  horse  preceded  his,  and  the  dis- 
cussion was  broken. 

"  She  betrays  an  almost  personal  interest  in  this  vaga- 
bond,'' meditated  Estmere,  restlessly.  "What  can  she 
know  of  him  ? — what  link  can  they  possibly  have  in 
common  ?" 

It  was  this  wonder  which,  unknown  to  him,  had  lent 
an  unaccustomed  acerbity  to  tin;  enunciation  of  his  patri- 
cian distaste  for  the  levities  and  laxaties  of  eccentric 
genius. 

For  the  first  time  she  had  differed  with  him:  fur  tin- 
first  time  she  had  flung  at  his  Order  a  phrase  that  spuke 
of  it  as  kindred  to  him,  bul  as  alien  to  her. 

"  It  must  be  but  a  woman's  caprice,"  lie  mused,  as  he 
followed  her.  "What  tie  can  thai  brillianl  creature  have 
with  the  vagaries  of  bohemianism ?" 

She,  herself,  went  onward  with  a  strange  emotion  at 


508  TRICOTRIN, 

her  heart :  she  felt  as  though  she  were,  in  some  sort, 
traitress  to  them  both;  she  recognized  even  at  that  dis- 
tance, with  unerring  instinct,  the  silvery  melodies  of  the 
violin  ;  she  thought  of  the  time  when  that  music  had  pre- 
ceded the  grape-laden  wagons  of  the  vintage-feast,  and  the 
great  noble  who  was  now  her  host  had  cried,  "  She  can- 
not be  of  the  People!" 

The  music  still  stole  up  from  the  valley,  toward  which 
they  drew  nearer  with  every  step  that  their  animals  set 
into  the  deep  wet  moss  of  the  hillside. 

On  her  face  an  unusual  softness,  an  unwonted  regret 
deepened  as  she  heard.  She  knew  that  she  had  two  sins 
upon  her,  sins  of  the  coward  and  of  the  traitor : — false 
shame  and  long  ingratitude.  Sins  low,  and  dastardly,  and 
unworthy  of  her  ! — sins  for  which  her  conscience  smote 
her  heavily. 

Since  the  eyes  of  Estmere  had  met  hers,  new  thoughts 
had  stirred  in  her:  the  ice  of  the  world's  frost  had  melted 
in  great  part  from  her;  she  had  been  moved  to  deeper 
thought,  quickened  to  warmer  feeling,  than  she  would 
have  imagined  it  possible  she  could  stoop  to  from  the 
elevation  of  her  superb  disdain. 

Because  she  herself  had  learned  the  meaning  of  love, 
she  had  felt  wherein  to  love  she  had  been  traitress.  Be- 
cause she  herself  had  learned  to  desire  a  tenderness  with- 
held, she  had  seen  where  to  tenderness  she  had  been  false 
and  full  of  cruelty. 

All  things  had  fallen  to  her  hands  in  lavish  gifts,  save 
this  one  thing  she  craved ;  in  its  denial  it  taught  her  a 
mercy  that  her  life  had  been  without  from  the  earliest 
days,  when  she  had  torn  down  with  childish  hands  a  score 
of  summer  lilies  that  she  might  triumph  in  the  mock 
wealth  of  gold  their  broken  stamens  yielded  her. 

Yet  the  nobler  feeling  was  not  without  its  baser  to 
alloy  it.  There  was  shame — of  which  in  turn  she  was 
ashamed — that  this  bitter  past  she  loathed  could  never  be 
effaced.  There  was  the  intolerable  dread  lest  when  she 
passed — as  pass  she  must — through  the  valley  where  he 
played,  one  look  upon  her  face  should  show  old  memories 
of  the  player.  And  in  her  uwn  wayward  fashion  she  had 
deep  attachment  to  him  still :  his  voice  could  move  her, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         509 

his  regard  could  touch  her  still,  as  those  of  a  deserted 
husband  stir  the  half-dormant  soul  of  a  woman  who  has 
long  forsaken,  and  forgotten  him,  in  the  dazzling  oblivion 
of  a  far-distant  life. 

As  the  wife  loves  no  more,  yet  still  half  vaguely  re- 
grets ;  would  abhor  to  return,  yet  half  wistfully  repents 
of  desertion ;  so  did  she,  whenever  she  met  the  gaze  of 
the  savior  whom  she  had  denied. 

She  shuddered  as  their  cavalcade  wound  down  into  the 
hollow  of  the  valley,  and  the  little  hamlet  lying  in  it  came 
into  their  full  view. 

"Ah-ha!  There  is  King  Tricotrin!"  cried  the  rider 
who  had  spoken  of  him.  "I  thought  so;  with  all  his 
Court  about  him — look  well,  Estmere,  you  will  see  the 
happiest  man  on  earth." 

Estmere  glanced  at  the  Duchess  de  Lira  as  he  an- 
swered: 

"Then  I  shall  see  the  man  who  has  fewest  responsi- 
bilities. Possibly  your  hero  recognizes  none  ?  It  is  the 
way  of  his  fraternity." 

"You  forget  the  dead  well  in  the  stone-mason's  court, 
my  lord;  and  what  you  were  pleased  then  to  grant  was 
'  heroism.' " 

She  spoke  quickly,  and  with  bitterness,  stung  by  his 
tone  into  recalling  the  scene,  whose  recollection  had  es- 
caped him  at  the  moment. 

lie  started,  and  bowed  his  head. 

"  I  had  indeed  forgot  it.  I  thank  you  for  the  reminder. 
The  man  who  could  so  imperil  his  life;  fur  a  fellow-creature 
must  have  courage,  and  therefore  nobility,  in  him." 

"l>ut  it  cannot  be  allowed",  I  suppose,  for  nil  that,  to 
counterbalance  the  misdemeanor  of  being  a  bohemian! 
A  decorous  citizen  would  have  probably  stood  on  the 
brink,  and  not  have  presumed  to  interfere  so  rashly  with 
tin-  designs  of  '  Providence  !' " 

■■  You  arc  pleased  t"  be  sarcastic,"  he  replied  to  her, 
with  some  tinge  of  impatience.  ''  1  trust  thai  I  should 
he  t he  ia -i  i.i  depreciate  so  generous,  so  grand  an  action; 
but.  at  the  same  lime.  I  admit  thai  1  have  known  very 
high  deeds  of  courage,  even  of  self-devotion,  dune  by  men 
who  had  very  little  sterling  worth  in  them.  Are  all  the 
>  43* 


510  TRICOTRIN. 

private  soldiers  of  an  army  heroes,  with  martyrs'  souls, 
think  you  ?  Indeed,  we  know  them  as  the  dregs  of  the 
worst  part  of  a  nation;  yet,  is  there  a  battle-field  or  a 
campaign  that  does  not  yield  us  hundreds  of  examples 
of  splendid  daring,  and  even  of  infinite  self-sacrifice  ?  It 
seems,  then,  that  the  deliverer  of  the  stone-mason  was 
known  to  you  at  the  time  of  that  accident?  I  was  un- 
aware of  that,  or  I  should  still  better  have  comprehended 
your  fear  for  him." 

She  understood  the  surprise,  the  bewilderment,  the 
vague  sense  of  suspicion  and  of  wonder  which  spoke  in  his 
words.  She  could  have  bitten  her  lips  through  for  having 
recalled  this  incident  to  him. 

"Better  have  comprehended  them  ?"  she  repeated,  with 
an  effort  that  was  successful  to  answer  him  with  no  trace 
of  embarrassment.  "What!  Is  it  so  unintelligible,  then, 
that  one  can  have  some  feeling  in  our  world  for  those  in 
peril,  some  sympathy  in  our  own  empty  egotism,  with 
honor,  energy,  and  endurance  ?" 

He  regarded  her  earnestly. 

"If  the  Duchess  de  Lira,"  he  replied,  at  length,  "have 
too  well  succeeded  in  persuading  the  world  that  she  is 
heartless  and  pitiless,  she  cannot  complain.  She  has 
striven  studiously  to  misrepresent  herself.  I,  for  one  at 
the  least,  shall  rejoice  to  believe  her  self-slandered." 

She  made  no  response. 

At  that  moment  another  sharp  bend  in  the  path  brought 
them  in  full  view  of  the  village,  and  the  young  nobleman, 
who  had  called  him  "King  Tricotrin,"  challenged  their 
attention  afresh,  and  pointed  out,  with  his  riding-whip, 
the  high  red  roof  and  the  brown  wooden  gallery  of  the 
village  tavern,  half-buried  in  hollyhocks,  and  cherry-trees, 
and  climbing  gourds,  where  Tricotrin  was  playing  to  the 
crowd. 

A  small  hushed  crowd  of  villagers,  old  men  and  old 
women,  maidens  and  mothers,  strong  men  and  little 
children  ;  all  the  dwellers  of  the  valley,  who,  at  the  first 
notes  of  the  violin,  bad  left  their  spinning-wheels,  their 
house-work,  their  seat  in  the  sun,  their  play  with  the 
dogs,  their  love-whispers  under  the  boughs,  and  had  gath- 
ered about  him  hushed  and  entranced. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         51 1 

The  valley  was  full  of  loveliness,  of  poetry,  of  pastoral 
peace;  it  was  as  a  Theocritan  idyl,  as  a  Cuyp's  concep- 
tion, in  the  full  luscious  light  of  the  declining  day.  But, 
there  were  in  the  lives  that  peopled  it,  exceeding  labor, 
infinite  pain,  pressure  of  hunger  oftentimes,  continual 
toil  that  dulled  the  senses  to  the  beauty  around,  fatigue 
that  had  no  haven  of  rest  to  which  to  look. 

Therefore  they  needed  him,  therefore  they  needed  his 
music  to  raise  their  hearts  from  the  earth  that  they  tilled, 
to  give  them  ears  for  the  voices  of  winds  and  of  waters, 
to  translate  to  them  the  unknown  tongues  of  the  flowers, 
to  pierce  the  deadened  heaviness  of  souls  slumbering  from 
the  stupor  of  overconstant  travail.  Therefore  they  needed 
him ;  and  he  gave  them  what  they  needed,  as  he  had 
given  to  the  people  who  loved  him  through  so  many 
seasons  of  so  many  years. 

Vainly  had  kings,  and  those  who  served  kings,  sought 
to  win  him  to  bring  that  melody  to  palaces.  He  would 
not  take  it  thither.  He  kept  it  for  those  in  whose  gray, 
hard,  aching  lives  the  pulse  of  joy  was  still,  the  sense  of 
beauty  numb ;  till,  beneath  its  spells,  those  pulses  quick- 
ened once  again,  that  long-dolled  sense  revived. 

The  thyrsus  of  Dionysus  was  not  wanted  where  the 
roses,  and  the  lilies,  and  the  myrtles  blossomed;  where 
the  young  goat  browsed  off  sweet  thyme  shoots,  and  the 
earth  was  purple  with  trailing  vines.  It  was  the  black 
sea-circled  rock,  the  salt-marsh,  where  the  water-bird 
moaned  in  loneliness,  the  parched  plain,  on  whose  sands 
the  slave  sank  dead,  that  the  wand  of  the  Wine-God 
touched,  and  made  laugh  out  in  loveliness. 

The  only  road  through  the  valley  homeward  to  Villiers 
led  directly  past  the  doorway  where  the  player  stood. 
She  would  have  given  years  of  her  life  not  to  have  passed 
him  there  and  thus;  but  she  was  a  woman  of  the  world, 
she  was  a  graceful  actress;  she  chose  rather  to  trust  to 
her  own  power  of  self-control,  than  to  risk  exciting  com- 
ment and  surprise— perchance  suspicion — by  any  evidence 
of  the  reluctance  that  slit;  felt. 

"Let  us  see  this  marvelous  musician  ;  let  us  hear  him 
nearer  still,''  urged  one  of  the  great  ladies  of  the  party  to 
the  young  Marquis  de  Valdanha  :  and  with  one  consent 


512  TRICOTRIN, 

the  band  of  riders  reined  up  as  they  passed  the  sign  of 
the  Silver  Stag,  swinging  above  its  gourds,  and  fruit-trees, 
and  blossoming  syringa. 

Tricotrin  played  on  as  though  he  saw  none  of  them, 
with  his  head  bent  over  his  bow,  and  his  face  shaded  by 
the  broad  leaf  of  his  hat.  He  had  recognized  them  even 
while  they  had  been  far  distant  on  the  hillside  path. 

"Good  day,  Tricotrin!"  cried  Valdanha,  with  careless 
good  humor.  "You  have  played  for  the  villagers.  Now 
pl-ay  for  their  seigneur  '' 

The  music  ceased  Tricotrin  lifted  his  head  with  a 
smile. 

"Good  day,  Valdanha!  I  play  for  the  millions — not 
for  the  units!" 

And  he  laid  his  fiddle  down  behind  him,  on  the  oak 
settle  of  the  porch.  The  people  fell  aside  ;  the  horses 
grouped  around  the  doorway  ;  he  uncovered  his  head  to 
the  women,  where  he  stood  with  the  careless  grace  that 
was  as  natural  to  him  as  it  is  to  a  noble  untamed  forest 
beast. 

"Nonsense  !"  cried  the  young  noble,  pressing  forward, 
not  knowing  with  whom  he  had  to  deal.  "  Your  music 
is  worthy  of  Paganini,  of  Bamboche ;  do  not  deny  it  to 
us!" 

And  he  cast  his  purse  at  the  feet  of  the  violin  player. 

"You  have  dropped  something,"  said  Tricotrin,  quietly, 
lifting  the  purse  up  to  its  owner  on  the  end  of  his  bow. 

Valdanha  laughed,  a  little  discomfited. 

"Pooh  !  Keep  it,"  he  said,  with  a  certain  embarrass- 
ment. "We  give  a  hundred  times  what  is  in  it  every 
week  to  an  opera-singer,  who  has  not  a  hundredth  part 
of  your  genius." 

Tricotrin  laughed  in  answer — a  scornful  amusement 
in  the  laughter. 

"You  of  the  imperial  court  think  everything  is  to  be 
bought  and  sold  ? — even  your  own  wives  !  Well,  my  music 
is  out  of  the  fashion ;  it  is  not  to  be  had  for  coin.  Take 
your  purse  up,  my  young  sir." 

"Not  I!"  said  the  marquis,  pettishly,  as  he  reined  his 
horse  back,  angered  to  be  made  absurd  in  the  eyes  of  his 
companions. 


THE  STORY    OF  A     WAIF  A  .YD    STRAY.  513 

"  Very  well,  then ;  take  it,  old  Yetta,"  said  Tricotrin, 
tossing  it  to  the  oldest  woman  in  the  village  group,  an 
octogenarian,  whose  sons  had  all  been  slaughtered  in 
Africa.  "It  is  not  the  first  time  alms-giving  has  been 
born  out  of  pique.  I  suppose  one  need  not  quarrel  with 
the  root  in  face  of  the  result.  The  edelweiss  springs 
out  of  Alpine  ice " 

They  were  silent;  regarding  him  with  the  languid 
wonder,  the  serene  curiosity,  of  men  and  women  ill  used 
to  any  failure  in  deference  shown  to  them,  yet  attracted 
by  the  promise  of  some  new  and  singular  thing. 

The  Duchess de  Lira  alone  kept  aloof,  letting  her  horse 
nibble  at  the  shunts  of  the  drooping  lime-boughs,  and 
looking  herself  upward  to  their  pyramids  of  starry  blos- 
som. 

"But  will  you  only  play  for  the  peasantry  or  for  the 
populace?"  asked  Estmefe,  drawing  nearer,  remembering 
his  latest  interview  with  the  man  whom  he  mistrusted 
as  a  character,  ami  regarded  as  a  vagabond,  yet  who  in- 
terested him  despite  himself. 

Tricotrin,  at  length,  mel  his  eyes; — in  his  own  laughed 
his  brilliant  enigmatical  smile. 

"  Will  you  tell  me  who  want  to  he  played  to  more? 
Music  is  education." 

"Certainly.  But — noignorant  mind,  no  untrained  ear, 
can  appreciate  melodies  as  perfeel  as  yours  seem  to  be?" 

"Can  an  ignorant,  or  an  untrained  brain  follow  the 
theory  of  light,  or  the  metamorphosis  of  plants  '/—yet  it 
may  rejoice  in  the  rays  of  a  summer  sun,  in  the  scent  of 
;i  nesl  of  wild  flowers!  So  may  it  do  in  my  music.  Shall 
I  ask  higher  payment  than  the  God  of  the  sun  and  the 
violets  asks  f<  r  himself  ?" 

Estmere  looked  at  him  with  an  increasing  interest. 

"A  noble  answer,'1  he  said,  with  a  he  ml  of  his  haughty 
head.  "Bui  still,  despite  this,  you  must  sometimes 
desire  a  more  appreciative  audience  ?" 

"Appreciative!  Oh-hel  how  shall  we  call  that? 
Then:  are  many  kinds  of  appreciation.  The  man  of 
science  appreciates  when  he  marvels  before  the  exquisite 
structure  of  the  sea-shell,  the  perfeel  organism  of  the 
flower;  hut   the  young  girl  appreciates,  to,,,  when  she 


514  TRICOTRIN, 

holds  the  shell  to  her  ear  for  its  music,  when  she  kisses 
the  flower  for  its  fragrance.  Appreciation !  It  is  an 
affair  of  the  reason,  indeed  ;  but  it  is  an  affair  of  the  emo- 
tions also." 

"  And  you  prefer  what  is  born  of  the  latter  ?" 

"Not  always;  but  for  my  music  I  do.  It  speaks  in 
an  unknown  tongue.  Science  may  have  its  alphabet,  but 
it  is  feeling  that  translates  its  poems.  Delaroche,  who 
leaves  off  his  work  to  listen ;  Descamps,  in  whose  eyes 
I  see  tears ;  Ingres,  who  dreams  idyls  while  I  play ;  a 
voung  poet  whose  face  reflects  my  thoughts,  an  old  man 
whose  youth  I  bring  back,  an  hour  of  pain  that  I  soothe, 
an  hour  of  laughter  that  I  give ; — these  are  my  recom- 
pense. Think  you  I  would  exchange  them  for  the  gold 
showers  and  the  diamond  boxes  of  a  Farinelli  ?" 

"  Surely  not.  All  I  meant  was  that  you  might  gain  a 
world-wide  celebrity  did  you  choose ." 

"  Gain  a  honey-coating  that  every  fly  may  eat  me  and 
every  gnat  may  sting  ?  I  thank  you.  I  have  a  taste  to 
be  at  peace,  and  not  to  become  food  to  sate  the  public 
famine  for  a  thing  to  tear." 

Estmere  smiled  ;  he  did  not  understand  the  man  who 
thus  addressed  him,  but  he  was  attracted  despite  all  his 
strongest  prejudices. 

"You  are  right!  Under  the  coat  of  honey  is  a  shirt 
of  turpentine.  Still — to  see  so  great  a  gift  as  yours 
wasted " 

"  Wasted?  Because  the  multitudes  have  it,  such  as  it 
is,  instead  of  the  units?  Droll  arithmetic!  I  am  with 
you  in  thinking  that  minorities  should  have  a  good  share 
of  power,  for  all  that  is  wisest  and  purest  is  ever  in  a 
minority,  as  we  know ;  but  I  do  not  see,  as  you  see,  that 
minorities  should  command  a  monopoly — of  sweet  sounds 
or  of  anything  else." 

"I  spoke  to  the  musician,  not  to  the  politician,"  said 
Estmere,  with  the  calm,  chill  contempt  of  his  colder  man- 
ner:— the  cold  side  of  his  character  was  touched,  and  his 
sympathies  were  alienated  at  once. 

Tricotrin,  indifferent  to  the  hint  as  to  the  rebuff,  looked 
at  him  amusedly. 

"  Oh,  I  know  you  well,  Lord  Estmere;  I  told  you  so 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         515 

not  long  ago,  to  your  great  disgust.  You  and  your  Order 
think  no  man  should  ever  presume  to  touch  politics  unless 
his  coat  be  velvet,  and  his  rent-roll  large,  like  yours. 
But,  you  see,  we  of  the  ecole  buissonni&re  generally  do  as 
we  like;  and  we  get  pecking  at  public  questions  for  the 
same  reason  as  our  brother  birds  peck  at  the  hips  and 
the  haws — because  we  have  no  granaries  as  you  have. 
You  do  not  like  Socialism  ?  Ah!  And  yet  affect  to  fol- 
low it." 

"  I!"  Estmere  looked  at  this  wayside  wit,  this  wine- 
house  philosopher,  with  a  regard  that  asked  plainly,  "are 
you  fool  or  knave?" 

"  To  be  sure,"  answered  Tricotrin.  "  You  have  chapel 
and  chaplain  yonder  at  your  chateau,  I  believe  ?  The 
Book  of  the  Christians  is  the  very  manual  of  Socialism: 
'You  read  the  gospel,  Marat?'  they  cried.  'To  be 
sure,'  said  Marat.  '  It  is  the  most  republican  book  in 
the  world,  and  sends  all  the  rich  people  to  hell.'  If  you 
do  not  like  my  politics,  beau  sire,  do  not  listen  to  the 
Revolutionist  of  Galilee." 

What  Estmere  would  have  answered  was  never  heard. 
At  that  moment  the  Duchess  de  Lira  turned  her  horse's 
head  quickly,  and  glanced  at  Tricotrin  with  a  swift  flash- 
ing regard,  that  conveyed  all  to  him,  naught  to  others. 

"Have  you  no  word  for  me?" 

She  spoke  on  an  impulse,  half  of  remorseful  shame  for 
her  own  silence,  half  of  unreasonable  feminine  impatience  at 
the  absence  of  all  recognition  from  him.  She  knew  that 
his  abstinence  from  it  was  out  of  noble  delicacy  toward 
her,  generous  submission  to  her  will  and  to  her  welfare; 
she  would  have  been  incensed  had  he  claimed  intimacy 
with  her,  yet  she  was  irritated  that  he  could  thus  ignore 
her  presence. 

With  the  remorseless  vanity  of  a  beautiful  wayward 
woman,  she  could  not  bear  to  Bee  indifference  even  in  one 
to  whose  peace  it  was  indispensable,  and  in  whom  her 
pride  refused  to  acknowledge  before  the  world  a  friend. 
This  alienation  between  them  had  been  from  her  own 
wish,  liy  her  own  work:  yet  his  acceptance  of  it  always 
stung  her  with  a  vivid  sense  of  humiliation. 

Therefore,  though  to  pass  him  as  a  stranger  was  what 


516  TRICOTRIN, 

she  had  desired,  her  self-love  and  her  remorse  forced  her 
to  break  through  the  barrier  she  had  herself  imposed: 
she  voluntarily  drew  all  eyes  upon  her,  as  with  some- 
thing of  the  enchanting  petulance  of  her  early  years  she 
asked : 

"Have  you  no  word  for  me  ?" 

He  uncovered  his  head  to  her  again,  and  smiled. 

"Many  words,  madam,  if  you  wish  for  them;  but  my 
phrases  are  not  the  chocolate-almonds  palatable  to  great 
ladies.  Besides  1  are  you  so  unaristocratic  as  to  remem- 
ber an  old  debt?  What  will  these  noblemen  think  of 
you  ?" 

Estmere's  regard  was  fastened  on  them  both  with  a 
surprise  he  did  not  attempt  to  veil ;  what  she  did,  what 
she  said,  had  an  interest  for  him  no  other  living  being's 
acts  and  words  possessed,  and  he  beheld  with  no  less  dis- 
quietude than  amazement  this  address,  to  a  lawless  bo- 
hemian,  from  a  woman  whom  even  her  own  society  found 
so  languidly  cold,  so  mercilessly  scornful. 

She,  a  patrician,  as  proud  as  himself,  far  aloof  from  all 
weakness  of  her  sex  or  derogation  to  her  dignity,  yet  had 
some  close  bond  in  common  with  a  strolling  musician,  a 
roaming  eccentricity,  a  scamp  in  a  linen  blouse,  with  a 
monkey  in  his  pocket,  and  the  salt  of  a  lawless  wit  on 
his  tongue ! 

Tricotrin  divined  the  thought  in  his  mind,  and  turned 
toward  him. 

"I  said  so!  Madam,  you  will  lose  my  lord's  esteem 
forever  if  you  do  not  take  care.  Earl  Eustace,  see  here ; 
long  years  ago,  when  this  fair  empress,  whom  you  know 
now,  was  childish  enough  to  object  to  a  premature  death, 
I  chanced  to  save  her  life  one  summer's  day ;  by  mere 
accident  and  without  risk,  so  that  she  has  nothing  to 
thank  me  for, — still,  she  remembers  it.  She  errs  to  her 
Order  in  harboring  such  a  plebeianism  as  gratitude  ;  but 
in  consideration  that  her  life  has  turned  out  worth  having, 
you  may  perhaps  be  brought  in  time  to  understand  and 
to  pardon  it!" 

The  light  sarcasm,  the  easy  disowning  of  all  his  vast 
claims,  the  swift  desire  to  save  her  even  from  the  passing 
suspicion  of  her  companions,  touched  all  her  latent  con- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         5H 

science,  stung  all  her  latent  generosity,  touched  and  stung 
them  as  no  assertion  of  his  rights  and  of  her  debt  could 
ever  have  done. 

Her  higher  nature  flashed  out  in  the  reply  she  gave,  as 
she  glanced  from  the  one  to  the  other : 

"Were  it  possible  that  I  could  incur  my  Lord  Est- 
mere's  censure  for  a  sentiment  that  the  very  beasts  and 
birds  can  feel  toward  their  benefactors,  I  could  not  lose 
his  esteem  so  utterly  as  he  would  assuredly  lose  mine  !" 

She  paused  suddenly,  her  face  hot  wit  h  shame  ;  she  felt 
the  poverty,  the  futility  of  any  acknowledgment  to  him, 
while  still  actually  she  denied  him,  like  the  apostle  who 
was  ashamed  of  his  Master, — while  still,  untold,  un- 
guessed,  the  width  and  the  depth  of  his  benefits  to  her 
lay  buried  for  sake  of  her  pride. 

Estmere  bowed  to  her, — in  his  heart  dissatisfied  and 
perplexed. 

"The  duchess  is  right  ;  I  should  indeed  merit  her  dis- 
dain were  1  capable  of  such  baseness.  In  her  childhood 
you  saved  her  life?  The  world  is  greatly  your  debtor. 
May  I  ask  how  it  chanced  '."' 

'•Oh!'!  nothing  to  speak  of;  she  was  lost  in  a  wood. 
and  would  have  made  a  choice  meal  for  a  wolf;  that  is 
all.  Mistigri  here  had  more  to  do  with  the  rescue  than 
I.  The  world  my  debtor  !  A  pretty  phrase  from  a  great 
lord's  lips  ;  hut  was  it  the  debtor  of  A.ntiochus  for  Cleo- 
patra ?  These  beautiful  women  are  no  good  to  the  world, 
they  are  what  the  peasants  here  think  comets  arc: — 
dazzling  messengers  of  evil,  thai  bring  lire,  and  war,  and 
pestilence  in  their  train.  The  beauty  of  woman.  —  it  is 
the  passion-flower  of  our  lives;  but  it  has  poison  in  one 
leaf  of  it.  and  healing  in  another.  Madame  de  Lira  is 
your  guest  ?" 

In  the  quick  transition  there  was  a  sequence  of  thought 
which  Estmere  caught,  though  il  was  unuttered ;  his  own 
impulse  to  lei  himself  be  beguiled  by  this  beauty,  whether 
it  brought  him  the  poisoned  or  the  healing  touch,  spurred 
his  comprehension. 

lie  gave  a  cold  assenl  to  the  question,  wondering  .-till 
what  manner  of  man  this  could  be  who  talked  thus  at  t  he 
door  of  a  peasant's  ale-house,  and  who  presumed  to  con- 
It 


518  TRICOTRIN, 

vey  to  himself  a  veiled  warning  against  a  passion  whose 
existence  no  sign  even  had  ever  betrayed  to  its  object. 

"You  stay  in  the  valley  yourself,  Tricotrin  ?"  asked 
Valdanha,  at  the  same  moment. 

"Pardieu!  I  never  stay  anywhere!"  laughed  Trico- 
trin. "  The  peregrinomanie,  as  sturdy  Guy  Patin  styled 
it,  is  the  only  salt  of  life ;  always  on  the  wing,  like  a 
swallow — it  is  to  keep  perpetual  youth,  perpetual  spring. 
You  flee  from  the  winter,  and  follow  where  the  sun  goes. 
Do  you  know,  to  my  thinking,  the  Peruvian's  notion  of 
paradise  eclipses  every  other; — endless,  buoyant  move- 
ment, through  never-ending  fields  of  light!  There  is  a 
grand  conception  ! — how  vulgar  beside  it  is  the  Christian, 
how  unpoetic  even  the  Hellenic,  picture  of  immortality!" 

"You  are  always  a  wanderer?"  asked  Estmere,  im- 
pelled, against  his  own  will,  to  interest  himself  in  one 
who  half  offended,  half  pleased,  half  alienated,  half  at- 
tracted him. 

" To  be  sure  I  am.     Why  not?" 

"  There  would  be  scant  obedience  to  the  duties  of  citi- 
zenship if  all  men  were  like  you,"  said  the  other  with  a 
smile. 

"And  no  opportunity  for  an  Oligarchy,  which  you 
would  resent  still  more  !  Well — see  you  here,  my  Lord 
Earl.  You  are  born  in  the  purple,  you  have  the  scepter 
of  power,  the  Aaron's  rod  of  wealth,  you  can  summon  all 
fair  things  about  you,  you  can  have  all  the  delights  of  the 
soul  and  the  senses ;  and  if  Satiety  curse  them  all  for 
you,  it  is  only  because  you  begin  them  too  early,  and  ask 
more  of  them  than  it  is  reasonable  to  ask  of  any  things 
of  earth.  You  possess  all  you  desire ;  and  have  no  foe 
to  rob  from  you:  save  the  devil  of  disgust,  that  hides 
underneath  all  possession.  But  if  you  were  a  poor  man, 
with  your  soul  and  your  senses  all  quickened,  but  no  in- 
cantation rod  of  gold  in  your  hand,  it  would  be  different 
with  you  ;  you  might  like  then  to  find  your  kingdom  in 
your  liberty,  your  treasure-house  in  the  light  of  the  sun, 
your  artists  in  the  colors  of  the  sky,  your  empire  in  the 
stretch  of  forest,  sea,  or  desert ;  your  poem  in  a  flower, 
your  music  in  a  torrent,  your  temple  in  a  palm  grove. 
Have  you  ever  thought  of  that  ?     Have  you  ever  thought 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         519 

how  dear,  to  men  who  have  not  wealth,  are  color,  sound, 
and  sense  and  dreams? — the  miraged  cities  that  only 
those  who  travel  in  long  drought  behold  as  compensa- 
tion.    You  need  them  not — you  live  in  palaces." 

Estmere  listened,  in  a  grave  wondering  courtesy:  the 
poetic  nature  scarcely  belonged  to  him  ;  he  had  led  the 
life  which  kills  it,  his  temperament  was  that  of  the  states- 
man, not  of  the  speculator,  of  the  lawgiver,  not  of  the 
visionary.  He  could  not  wholly  comprehend  the  tenor 
of  the  fantastic,  vivid,  half-metaphorical  answer  given 
him  ;  )ret  there  was  too  much  sympathy  in  his  mind — 
from  which  no  noble  thought  was  alien — for  him  to  ridi- 
cule or  slight  it. 

"  You  are  happy,"  he  said,  with  a  sigh  that  was  almost 
of  envy.  "  There  is  no  wand  of  gold  that  summons  such 
fair  shapes  as  can  the  poet's  power  of  fancy.  Only — I 
incline  to  think  you  live  twenty  centuries  too  late,  or — 
twenty  centuries  too  early." 

Viva  turned  on  him  a  swift  and  eager  glance. 
"Of  course!"  she  said,  with  a  certain  emotion,  whose 
meaning  he  could  not  analyze.  "Was  there  ever  yet  a 
man  of  genius  who  was  not  either  the  relic  of  some  great 
dead  age,  or  the  precursor  of  some  noble  future  one,  in 
which  he  alone  has  faith?" 

"Chut!"  said  Tricotrin.  rapidly;  he  could  not  trust 
himself  to  hear  her  speak  in  his  own  defense.  "Fine 
genius  mine!  To  fiddle  to  a  few  villagers,  and  dash  color 
on  an  ale-house  shutter!  1  have  the  genius  of  indolence, 
if  you  like;  as  to  my  belonging  to  a  by-gone  age,— well ! 
I  am  not  sure  that  1  have  not  goi  the  soul  in  me  of  some 
barefooted  friar  of  Moyen  Age,  who  went  about  where 
he  listed,  praying  heir,  laughing  there,  painting  a  missal 
with  a  Pagan  love-god,  and  saying  a  verse  of  Eorace 
instead  of  a  chant  of  the  Church.  Or,  may  be,  I  am 
more  like  some  Greek  gossiper,  who  loitered  away  his 
days  in  the  sun,  and  ate  his  dates  in  the  market-place, 
and  listened  here  and  there  to  a  philosopher,  and— just 
by  taking  no  thought — hit  on  a  truer  philosophy  than 
came  out  of  Porch  or  Garden.  Ah!  my  Lord  of  Est- 
mere, you  have  two  hundred  servants  over  there  at  Yil- 
liers,  I  have  been   told;  do  you  not  think  I   am  better 


520  TRICOTRIN, 

served  here  by  one  little  brown-eyed,  brown-cheeked 
maiden,  who  sings  her  Beranger  like  a  lark,  while  she 
brings  me  her  dish  of  wild  strawberries  ?  There  is  fame 
too  for  vou, — his — the  Kins?  of  the  Chansons !  When  a  c,ii*l 
washes  her  linen  in  the  brook, — when  a  herdsman  drives 
his  flock  through  the  lanes, — when  a  boy  throws  his  line 
in  a  fishing-stream, — when  a  grisette  sits  and  works  at 
her  attic  lattice, — when  a  student  dreams  under  the  lin- 
den leaves, — he  is  on  their  lips,  in  their  hearts,  in  their 
fancies  and  joys.  What  a  power  !  What  a  dominion ! 
Wider  than  any  that  emperors  boast!" 

"And,"  added  Estmere,  with  a  smile,  "if  you  were  not 
Trieotrin  you  would  be  Beranger?" 

"Assuredly.  A  lyric  poet,  if  he  have  art,  or  rather 
nature  enough  in  him,  to  wind  himself  into  the  lives  and 
the  souls  of  the  people,  reigns  as  no  Alexander,  no  Cassar, 
no  Sulla  ever  did  yet.  A  statesman  rules, — ay,  for  a  life- 
time ;  but  it  is  only  the  poet  whose  scepter  stretches  over 
generations  unborn.  But  good  day  to  you — or  rather 
good  night.  I  have  no  business  to  weary  you  with  words, 
if  I  do  not  give  you  music." 

"But  will  you  not  give  us  both  ?" 

"  No,"  he  answered  abruptly,  and,  lifting  his  hat  to 
the  women  of  the  group,  he  turned  with  a  rapid  move- 
ment and  went  within.  The  memory  was  keen  in  him  of 
the  day  when  he  had  played  to  the  little  child  that  had 
dropped  her  lilies  and  forget-me-nots  to  listen. 

Sim  who  once — so  long  ago! — had  been  that  child, 
happy  in  her  floral  wealth,  let  him  go  from  her  in  silence, 
with  only  a  courteous  gesture  of  farewell.  Conscience 
was  not  dead  in  her ;  but  it  was  numb,  vacillating,  be- 
wildered ;  it  allowed  her  passively  to  accept  the  tacit  sacri- 
fice made  to  her.  It  allowed  her  to  acquiesce  in  his 
acceptance  of  her  abandonment,  in  his  self-negation  for 
her  sake. 

Yet  she  felt  debased,  unworthy,  a  coward  to  the  core ; 
she  started  like  a  guilty  creature  when  her  host  addressed 
her  as  they  rode  away  from  the  tavern  porch,  whose 
golden  sunflowers  the  evening  sun  was  just  commencing 
to  redden  into  stars  of  fire. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         521 

"A  strange  character, — this  man?"  he  said  to  her.  "A 
genius,  no  doubt;   but  a  genius  wasted." 

"No  doubt,"  she  answered,  with  a  certain  contemptu- 
ous satire,  in  which  her  own  emotions  found  alike  mask 
and  refuge.     "  He  makes  no  money  by  it  !" 

"  That  was  not  my  meaning,"  replied  Estmere,  annoyed 
at  the  misconstruction.  "  It  is  not  for  gold  that  the  high- 
est intelligences  labor  in  any  age.  But  talents  thrown 
away  upon  a  wineshop  audience  are  still  less  profitably 
employed  than  wrapped  in  the  napkin  of  the  parable." 

"The  wineshop  audience  feels!"  she  answered,  with 
that  occasional  ironic  scoff  at  the  patrician  order  which 
would  now  and  then  break  out  in  her,  and  seem  to  show 
some  latent  though  repelled  sympathy  with  the  bohe- 
mianism  of  another  class.  "Can  we  say  so  much  for 
the  vapid  circle  of  a  palace  drawing-room,  murmuring 
scientific  jargon,  and  tapping  faint  applause  with  fans  and 
gloves!" 

"I  think  we  may, — sometimes,"  -aid  Estmere,  coldly. 
"I  cannot  myself  perceive  why  educated  faculties  in  the 
admirer,  make  discriminative  admiration  less  honorable 
to  its  object  than  a  clown's  grin,  or  a  milkmaid's  tears. 
It  is  the  cant  of  the  age  to  presuppose  the  monopoly  of 
all  sympathies  by  the  uncultured  classes;  now,  I  believe 
that  there  are  no  classes  more  utterly  unsympathetic  on 
the  earth.  Sympathy  has  its  birth  in  the  mind  yet  more 
than  in  the  heart ;— the  sympathy  of  the  boor  is  restricted 
to  his  own  hearth;  it  is  only  the  sympathy  of  the  scholar 
that  extends  to  things  totally  opposed,  and  persons  en- 
tirely alien,  to  him." 

"Yet  there  are  scholars  who,  if  they  climb  the  ice- 
mountain  of  their  own  ambition,  care  not  whom  the  ava- 
lanches slay  in  the  villages  below." 

"Well, — that  is  not  a  worse.it  is  to  an  extent  a  higher, 
form  of  egotism  than  the  peasant's,  who.  if  his  own  hay- 
rick be  not  in  flames,  cares  not  what   torch  of  war  d< 
lates  t  he  neighboring  plain.     Bu1  can  you  tell  me  no  more 
of  this  man—  Tricotrin  ?     Tricotrin  !  it  is  not  a  name." 

"  1  have  never  known  him  go  by  any  other.  No, — I 
can  tell  you  very  little  of  him.  lie  is  a  logogriph,  whose 
leading  word  1  have  never  guessed." 

n 


522  TRICOTRIN, 

"Yet  he  saved  your  life,  it  appears?" 

"  That  is  a  sarcasm  !  He  saved  my  life  certainly;  but 
I  was  an  infant,  I  have  no  recollection  of  the  circum- 
stance ;  I  have  merely  heard  of  it " 

"And  you  know  nothing  of  him  ? — I  mean  of  his  ante- 
cedents, his  modes  of  life,  his  pursuits,  of  what  first 
made  him  the  bohemian  and  the  eccentricity  that  he  is 
now  ?" 

"  I  have  no  idea.  I  have  never  had  any  means  of 
ascertaining.  I  know  that  the  Duke  de  Lira  held  him  in 
high  esteem  for  some  great  service  rendered  in  an  insur- 
rection ;  I  know  that  he  is  a  man  of  infinite  wit,  infinite 
resources,  infinite  nobility  of  feeling, — that  is  the  extent 
of  my  knowledge.  I  greatly  doubt,  also,  if  any  one's 
influence  is  greater.  He  is  '  Tricotrin,'  the  people  say. 
Both  he  and  they  seem  to  consider  all  uttered  in  that 
word  which  you  find  so  singular." 

"  I  find  it  singular  because  it  is  so  evidently  but  a  pseu- 
donym  " 

"  I  never  thought  of  it  as  such.  There  are  strange 
names  among  the  French  bas  peuple." 

"But  that  man  does  not  belong  to  the  'bas  peuple  '  of 
any  nation." 

"By  his  look — no.  Yet — I  never  heard  anything  that 
suggested  his  belonging  to  any  other  grade  than  that 
which  he  assumes  ;  although " 

"Although  what?" 

"Although, — is  not  his  tenderness  for  the  people  rather 
that  of  one  who  has  voluntarily  associated  himself  with 
them  than  that  of  one  who  naturally  belongs  to  them?" 

"  This  was  my  own  thought.  Would  it  not  be  possible 
to  learn  something  of  him  ?" 

"  I  do  not  think  so  ;  I  imagine  no  one  would  more 
acutely  resent  any  attempt  to  penetrate  his  past." 

She  spoke  hurriedly,  for  the  first  time  losing  the  easy 
and  negligent  self-possession  she  had  preserved  through- 
out the  conversation.  She  felt  an  intense  anxiety  to  di- 
vert his  thoughts  from  the  subject,  and  his  inquiries  from 
the  fortunes,  of  Tricotrin  ;  and  she  allowed  her  anxiety 
to  overcome  the  tact  and  facility  of  her  assumed  indiffer- 
ence.    To  penetrate  his  past  was  to  penetrate  hers ! 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         523 

He  perceived  that  restless  fear ;  but  he  said  nothing  of 
it.  He  accepted  her  words  in  their  surface-meaning,  and 
assented  to  them. 

"Those  men,"  he  added,  "  who  fling  away  great  gifts 
in  gipsy-camps,  and  dash  their  Castalian  water  with  pot- 
house drinks,  are  usually  the  heroes  of  adventures  as 
amusing  as,  but  not  more  reputable  than,  those  of  Gil 
Bias  ;  and,  though  they  censure  the  world  and  laugh  at 
mankind,  they  have  generally  first  been  shown  a  jail  by 
the  one  and  the  door  by  the  other.  'A  great  Charac- 
ter !'  says  Society  :  when  it  means — '  a  great  Scamp  !'  " 

A  hot  flush  of  color  passed  over  the  fairness  of  her  face; 
her  teeth  set. 

"You  love  to  turn  an  epigram,  Lord  Estmere  ! — and 
care  little  what  you  sacrifice  to  its  points.  Look  in  the  face 
of  that  man  we  have  left,  and  say — you  who  pride  your- 
self on  your  knowledge  of  men- — whether  any  single  thing 
of  shame,  or  of  crime,  or  of  dishonor,  could  go  with  the 
features  you  see,  with  the  bearing  that  defies  you,  with 
the  lion's  regard  that  meets  your  own  !" 

lie  bowed  his  head. 

"This  person  is  fortunate  in  his  interest  for  you — 
proud  in  his  defender." 

Then  silence  ensued  between  them  ;  and  lasted  until 
they  rode  up  to  the  doors  of  Villiers. 


CHAPTER   LVI. 

"I  have  lied  to  him  !"  she  thought,  dropping  her  head 
on  her  hands  when  she  reached  her  own  chambers.  She 
had  been  ashamed  of  the  sin  of  ingratitude,  of  tin;  sin  of 
cowardice,  but  she  was  far  more  bitterly  ashamed  of  the 
sin  of  falsehood, — because  this  last  sin  was  against  the 
man  in  whose  sight  she  desired  not  to  have  only  the  sem- 
blance, but  the  reality,  of  perfect  truth,  and  purity,  and 
honor. 

She  had  said  no  absolute  word  of  untruth  to  him,  per- 


524  TRICOTRIN, 

haps ;  it  was  true  that  she  knew  nothing'  of  the  whence 
and  the  whither  of  the  one  of  whom  they  had  spoken. 
While  protected  by  Tricotrin  she  had  been  too  young  to 
question  the  life  that  seemed  almost  divine  in  her  eyes; 
since  she  had  quitted  him  the  memory  of  it  had  been 
blotted  out  by  a  thousand  more  vivid  interests  and  more 
selfish  pursuits.  It  was  true  she  knew  nothing — never 
had  asked  aught — of  this  fate  which  from  her  childhood 
upward  had  been  too  familiar  in  her  eyes  to  have  any 
aspect  of  strangeness  or  of  mystery. 

She  had  adhered  to  the  letter  of  the  truth  ;  but  that  was 
all ; — in  spirit,  in  effect,  in  purpose,  she  had  lied  to  Est- 
mere ;  lied  to  the  man  whose  regard  pierced  the  coldness 
and  the  vanity  of  her  life,  as  the  sun's  rays  of  the  mature 
year  pierce  the  snows  and  the  ice  of  the  mountain-peaks, 
and  who  called  the  long-buried  beauties  of  her  gentler 
nature  into  fresh  existence,  as  those  rays  recall  to  blos- 
som the  crocus,  and  the  gentian,  and  the  edelweiss. 

Her  sin  against  him,  as  weighed  with  her  sin  against 
the  other,  was  as  a  grain  of  wheat  beside  a  millstone ; 
yet  the  life-long  guilt  had  left  her  without  remorse,  with- 
out regret,  almost  without  moral  consciousness  of  it ;  the 
guilt  of  the  evasion,  the  concealment,  made  her  feel  covered 
with  shame,  and  forever  without  fitness  for  him. 

He  had  no  right  to  her  confidence;  she  owed  him  no 
allegiance  ;  he  had  no  title  to  search  out  her  past ; — but 
these  sophisms  availed  nothing  to  reconcile  her  with  her- 
self. 

In  that  moment  she  was  utterly  base  in  her  own  judg- 
ment; she  had  lost  dignity,  and  purity,  and  truth,  and 
even  courage  ;  she  had  been  a  coward !  There  was  no- 
thing viler  or  lower  in  her  esteem ;  and  in  that  one  hour 
she  saw  down  into  the  depths  of  her  own  heart,  and  saw 
there  weakness  and  worthlessness,  that  made  the  haughty 
duchess,  who  exercised  so  superb  a  power  over  the  souls 
of  men,  immeasurably  beneath  the  child  that  had  learned 
her  simple  lessons  of  loyalty  and  justice  from  the  lips  of 
an  old  peasant  woman. 

"  I  cannot  deceive  him  /"  she  thought,  "  and  yet,  he 
must  never — he  shall  never — know  I" 

A  more  poignant  shame  than  even  that  of  falsehood 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         525 

smote  her  as  she  mused  thus  ;  a  shame  that  made  her 
ready  to  tear  her  very  heart  out  of  her  living  body, — the 
shame  that  she  gave  her  love  to  a  man  who  had  never 
uttered  to  her  one  word  of  passion  or  of  tenderness. 

"I  fascinate  him, — I  perplex  him, — I  gain  his  ecu- 
sure, — I  excite  his  scorn, — I  force  his  admiration ; — but  are 
any  of  those  love  '<"'  she  thought,  in  the  bitterness  of  her 
soul. 

And  her  head  sank,  and  her  eyes  grew  blind  with  tears, 
and  her  life  ached  with  vain  vague  longing. 

Then  the  imperious  coquetry  in  her  rose,  and  she 
looked  at  her  own  face  ;  and  her  eyes  flashed,  her  mouth 
laughed  in  proud  resolve  and  consciousness  of  power. 

"  Hi'  shall  love  me  !"  she  said  half  aloud,  in  her  closed 
teeth:  it  was  as  much  a  menace  as  avow.  She  had  said 
it  often,  when  but  vanity  alone  had  been  involved  in  its 
realization  ;  she  said  it  now  with  all  her  soul  set  upon  its 
fruition  She  drove  aside  her  repentance,  her  self-con- 
demnation, her  sickening  sense  of  danger  and  of  error: 
and  summoned  her  women  about  her,  and  gave  herself 
into  their  hands,  and  had  the  gold  powder  scattered  over 
tresses  brighter  than  itself,  and  gossamer  laces  cast  over 
beauties  which  they  half  veiled  only  wholly  to  enhance, 
and  the  diamonds  girdle  a  form  lit  for  the  cestus  of  Venus, 
and  a  single  scarlet  flower  set  to  glow  against  the  white- 
ness of  her  bosom. 

"  lie  shall  love  me!"  she  thought,  as  site  glanced  at 
the  mirrors  ere  she  swept  from  her  chambers,  voluptu- 
ously lovely  as  any  goddess  that  ever  passed  through 
the  Ivory  Gate  to  haunt  the  dreams  of  poet  or  of  painter. 
Bui — Estmere  never  hail  feared  her  a-  he  feared  her 
sensuous  grace,  her  intoxicating  charm,  that  night. 

It  was  the  scarlet  llower  of  passion,  of  pride,  of  vic- 
tory, of  delirium,  that  glowed  within  her  breast: — not 
the  white  [lower  of  purity  and  of  truth. 

The  one  had  already  betrayed  him  ;  the  other  he  hail 
sought  as  the  knighl  sought  5folande  with  the  Yellow- 
Hair — in  vain. 

Still  he  loved  her,  though  he  withheld  the  knowledge 
of  his  subjection  from  her;  though  he  resisted,  and 
scorned,  and  feared  the  emotion  that  possessed  him.     lie 


528  TRICOTRIN, 

concealed  it  jealously,  because  he  mistrusted  her ;  mis- 
trusted that  she  might  fool  him  as  she  fooled  all  men  ; 
that  she  had  danger,  and  evil,  and  cruelty  in  her,  as  have 
all  things  dominated  by  vanity. 

Also,  he  mistrusted  himself;  he  was  no  longer  young  : 
with  this  boy's  play  of  love  he  had  had  naught  to  do, 
since  it  had  dealt  him  back  the  gray  ashes  of  a  desolated 
honor,  in  return  for  his  fair  gold  of  faith.  It  seemed  to 
him  as  a  madman's  folly  to  suppose  that  he  alone  could 
succeed,  where  all  others  had  failed,  in  awakening  ten- 
derness and  fealty  from  such  a  woman  as  this.  He  had 
distrust  of  her  ;  distrust  of  himself. 

The  proud  noble  could  not  sue  to  be  rejected  ;  the  grave 
statesman  could  not  bend  his  neck  in  an  unvalued  hom- 
age ;  the  superb  gentleman  could  not  stoop  in  vain,  and 
give  himself  to  the  gay  languid  disdain  of  a  successful 
and  sated  coquette. 

He  loved  her  with  a  passion  only  stronger  and  deeper 
for  its  suppression ;  but  still  stronger  than  itself  were 
his  fears  of  hers,  and  his  own  self-respect.  He  would 
not  give  up  his  honor  for  her  wanton  play,  his  dignity 
for  her  captious  triumph. 

Moreover,  a  certain  vague  but  painful  suspicion  had 
arisen  in  him  with  the  reticence  that  he  had  noted  in  her 
on  the  subject  of  that  tavern-musician  whom  she  de- 
fended, yet  ignored.  No  single  trace  of  embarrassment 
and  of  reluctance  that  she  had  displayed  had  been  lost 
upon  him.  He  perceived  that  there  was  here  some 
memory,  or  some  circumstance,  that  she  desired  to  thrust 
away;  some  bond  between  her  and  this  wanderer  that 
she  wished  unrevealed,  undivined.  His  own  mind  was 
too  lofty,  his  own  thoughts  too  noble,  for  any  coarse  or 
base  suggestion  to  present  itself  to  him  as  the  reason  of 
this ;  still  the  fancy — for  it  was  scarcely  more — haunted 
and  troubled  him. 

He  loved  her: — hence  he  would  have  had  her  life  stain- 
less as  the  driven  snow,  and  open  before  him  as  the 
leaves  of  a  book.  And  he  felt  instinctively  that  it  never 
would  be  thus. 

Ere  he  had  met  her,  she  had  lived  through  many  sea- 
sons of  victory,  of  brilliancy,  of  luxury,  of  celebrity ;  in 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         527 

them  how  many  dead  passions,  dead  joys,  dead  pleasures, 
dead  pains,  might  lie  of  which  he  could  never  know? 
They  said  that  she  had  never  loved :  but  who  could  tell  ? 
— who  could  be  certain  that  her  scorn  for  all  her  facile 
conquests  might  not  be  born  from  some  secret  and  silent 
emotion  of  which  she  was  ashamed  ?  some  impulse  that 
could  not  be  indulged  without  derogation  from  her  code, 
degradation  to  her  rank  1  This  well  might  be,  without 
shame  to  her  : — this  stranger  might  hold  the  clew  to 
whatsoever  the  secret  was ;  might,  even,  have  been  the 
object  of  such  an  attachment.  Thus  he  mused  in  the 
self-torture  with  which  the  wisest  torments  himself  when 
once  the  love  of  woman  has  entered  into  him. 

He  was  riding  slowly  through  the  outlying  woods  of 
his  estate,  in  the  freshness  of  the  very  early  day.  Some 
forest  question  had  needed  his  presence  there,  and  he  had 
been  glad  of  the  stillness,  the  loneliness,  the  freedom  from 
his  duties  as  a  host. 

"  What  he  would  have  given  for  youth  1"  he  thought, 
"  for  the  years  of  his  son's  youth  !" 

That  futile  desire  had  never  touched  his  life  before  ;  it 
was  spent  in  grave  ambitions,  high  pursuits,  fair  fame  ; 
it  was  too  lofty  for  envy,  too  serene  for  regret: — it  was 
only  dow,  when  the  weakness  of  passion  undermined  it, 
that  he  felt,  with  a  restless  weariness,  sorrow  for  the 
many  years  that  had  slipped  by  and  never  brought  him 
a  joy  ;  desire  for  the  glow  and  glory  of  the  hopes  which, 
with  hiin.'had  died  out  so  long  ago,  crushed  like  bruised 
asphodels  in  the  white  false  hand  of  a  woman. 

A  sigh  escaped  him;  a  quick,  low,  impatient  sigh  of 
pain: — had  he  dwelt  in  peace  through  all  these  many 
seasons  only  to  fall  before  this  sorceress  at  the  last  1 

He  started,  as  in  answer  to  that  sigh  a  voice  chal- 
lenged him  in  what  he  had  believed  to  be  so  perfect  and 
profound  a  solitude 

"  You  are  weary,  Ear]  Eustace,  and  on  a  midsummer 
morning,  too  !  For  shame  I  Ah!  the  grass-wreaths  of 
the  Scipii  and  the  Julii  were  searer  in  all  their  honor  than 
the  fresh  Campagna  grasses  that  boy  ports  wove  for 
Nffivia's  or  for  Flora's  hair;  it  is  so  to  this  day,  is  it 
not?" 


528  TRICOT  R  IN, 

Estmere  checked  his  horse,  and  glanced  around  in  the 
sun-lightened  woods. 

Beside  him,  knee-deep  in  flowers  and  ferns,  with  a 
wounded  quail  in  his  right  hand,  stood  Tricotrin,  under 
a  group  of  pines,  from  whose  boughs  Mistigri  was 
swinging. 

"I  have  been  bathing  in  one  of  your  pools,"  pursued 
his  trespasser,  whose  hair  and  beard  still  glistened  with 
water-drops.  "A  little  man-forgotten  lake  there,  under 
the  trees,  that  no  creature  ever  sees  save  the  water-fowl. 
You  bathe  in  a  dainty  marble  bath,  with  a  fresco  of  Leda 
on  the  walls,  I  believe  ; — bah  !  my  teals'  and  widgeons' 
and  wild  swans'  Jordan  is  far  better." 

Estmere  did  not  answer  him  at  once  ;  surprise  at  his 
presence  there,  annoyance  at  the  audacious  freedom  of 
the  address,  and  the  latent  attraction  that  this  man  pos- 
sessed for  him,  all  holding  him  silent.  He  had  desired 
to  meet  with  Tricotrin  again ;  but  he  was  scarcely  pre- 
pared for  so  unceremonious  a  greeting. 

"  Good  day  to  you,"  he  said  at  length,  with  that  cold 
and  gentle  courtesy  which  marked,  far  more  definitely 
than  other  men's  insolence,  the  differences  of  rank. 
"  You  have  a  bird  there  ? — is  it  dead  ?" 

Tricotrin  looked  up  and  laughed  in  his  eyes,  touching 
the  little  quail  softly. 

"You  think  I  look  like  a  poacher?  No — the  thing  is 
living  ;  but  I  found  it  with  its  wing  broken — by  a  blow 
from  a  stick  or  a  stone,  most  likely;  and  I  sha^ll  keep  it 
with  me  and  cure  it.  '  Fr aires  mei,'  said  Francois  d'Assis 
to  the  birds :  he  was  a  bold  man  to  claim  brotherhood 
with  the  innocents?  And  he  talked  to  them — the  fool ! — 
instead  of  listening.     What  presumption!" 

"You  are  fond  of  birds  and  animals?  you  are  a  natu- 
ralist?" 

"God  be  praised,  no!  I  am  fond  of  them,  yes.  How 
honest  they  are,  how  tender,  how  grateful !  They  do  not 
take  your  benefits  as  so  many  reasons  why  they  should 
cut  your  throat  lest  you  should  ever  claim  a  debt  against 
them,  which  men  are  apt  to  do.  But  a  naturalist!  A 
man  who  thinks  himself  justified  in  making  all  creation 
groan,  if  he  can  tickle  his  own  vanity  with  one  straw  of 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY,         529 

knowledge ;  who  will  give  the  tortures  of  hell  to  the  dumb 
meek  brutes,  if  so  be  that  thereby  he  may  gain  some  scrap 
of  false  science,  which  the  future  will  laugh  at  as  the 
present  now  laughs  at  Aristotle !  No !  For  what  do 
you  take  me?" 

"For  what  do  you  bid  me  to  take  you  ?" 

He  asked  the  question  on  an  impulse :  he  ardently  de- 
sired to  learn  something,  were  it  ever  so  little,  of  this 
wandering  life,  that  was  the  entire  antithesis  of  his  own. 

Tricotrin's  eyes  laughed  again  at  him  with  their  amused 
and  sunny  irony. 

"  Rather  tell  me  what  you  select  for  me ;  I  am  three 
abominations  in  your  sight,  I  fancy:  a  cosmopolitan,  a 
democrat,  and  a  vagabond — eh?" 

"  Surely,  the  cosmopolitan  is  a  man  of  too  high  powers 
and  gifts  to  be  fitly  associated  in  designation  with  the 
other  two  appellatives?" 

"Pooh!  What  is  there  to  object  to  in  the  other  two, 
pray?  David,  Mithridates,  Artaxerxes,  Nezahualcoytl, 
Viriathus,  scores  of  great  kings,  were  vagabonds  and 
wanderers  in  their  novitiates;  and  as  for  democrats  ? 
well,  one  may  have  worse  company,  1  fancy,  than  Buzot, 
Vergniaud,  Milton,  Hampden,  and  all  their  like,  stretch- 
ing up  to  Caius  Gracchus.  Not  thai  1  altogether  hold 
with  him  for  his  bribes,  his  rancor,  his  corn  proletariat, 
and  other  such  mailers " 

"You  cite  honorable  names,"  answered  Estmere,  with 
a  smile,  unconsciously  falling  into  his  companion's  vein 
of  speech.  "You  forget  that,  for  the  few  kings  errant, 
there  are  a  million  of  thieves  and  gipsies;  and  that  for 
one  Gracchus  we  get  a  China,  a  Critolaus,  a  Glaucius, 
more  or  less  miserably  repeated  a  thousand  times  in  every 
nation." 

"Ay, — as  for  one  Drusus,  one  Scipio,  one  Sempronius, 
and  one  Estmere,  i<>  whom  'nobility  is  obligation,'  there 
are  a  million  petty  patricians  who  play  at  a  paper-tyrannis, 
and  disgrace  the  order,  while  they  ape  the  way-  of  the 
great  Eupatrids.  Hut  I  do  nol  see,  myself,  that  tin-  dig- 
nity of  the  original  type  is  harmed  because  it  is  unwor- 
thily imitated,  fur  the  real  palina  of  a  true  Correggio, 
you  get  the  false  glaze  vi'  ten  thousand  copies  from  the 

45 


530  TRICOTRIN, 

schools ;  but  that  does  not  change  the  true  Correggio's 
value." 

Estmere  bent  his  head  in  acknowledgment  of  the  trib- 
ute to  himself,  which  he  saw  was  no  lip  service,  but  the 
offspring  of  a  cordial  sincerity ;  while  increased  surprise 
came  on  him  :  this  man,  with  a  democrat's  codes,  had 
none  of  the  democrat's  blind  class-hatred. 

"You  have  a  silver  tongue,"  he  said,  resting  his  eyes 
on  his  companion  in  grave  speculation.  "You,  yourself, 
I  believe,  with  all  your  professions  of  lawlessness,  admit 
that  'humanity  is  obligation,'  a  law  still  more  stringent, 
and  far  more  wide-spreading.  I  was  present  when  the 
Paris  crowd  worshiped  you  for  your  noble  rescue  of  the 
stone-mason  from  the  dead  well." 

Tricotrin  gave  an  impatient  gesture,  and  almost  an 
embarrassed  laugh.  He  hated  such  things  as  these  in  his 
life  to  be  known  or  be  quoted. 

"Pshaw!  What  was  that?"  he  cried  lightly.  "  I  did 
not  get  even  a  sprain.  To  those  poor,  sickly,  effeminate, 
city-mewed  Parisians,  who  scarce  ever  stir  outside  their 
barrier-walls,  it  might  look  a  great  feat ;  but  to  any  one 
who  knows  anything  of  mountaineering,  to  any  one  who 
has  hung  by  a -rope  over  an  alpine  precipice,  the  mere 
going  down  into  a  well  was  a  nothing  at  all." 

Estmere  smiled. 

"You  may  undervalue  the  action  ;  no  one  else  is  likely 
to  do  so.  It  was  a  very  splendid  result  of  such  a  union 
of  courage  and  coolness  as  we  do  not  very  often  find  ; 
and  it  was  a  great  self-devotion  also." 

"  Self-devotion?  Paf !  Not  a  bit  of  it.  Is  death  such 
a  terrible  thing  that  we  are  such  wonderful  heroes  for 
risking  it?  I  am  Pagan  enough  to  deem  it  no  such 
awful  visitant.  By-the-way,  it  is  a  sufficiently  droll 
affair,  that  Christianity,  which  professes  itself  so  sure  of 
the  justice  of  Divine  judgments  and  of  the  possession  of 
an  eternal  Hereafter,  should  be  the  one  religion  whose 
followers  have  most  assiduously  dressed  up  Death  as  a 
Xing  of  Terrors?    Anomalous,  assuredly." 

Estmere  still  regarded  him  with  earnest  interest,  pay- 
ing little  heed  to  what  he  uttered,  so  intent  was  he  him- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         53 1 

self  in  speculation  as  to  what  this  wanderer  could  pos- 
sibly be. 

"  It  was  certainly  you,"  he  said,  at  length,  "  whom  I  met, 
not  very  long  since,  in  Lelis'  atelier,  and  who  reminded 
me  of  my  having  once  purchased  the  Attavante?" 

"Yes;  it  was  I.'' 

"  Lelis  spoke  of  you  to  me  with  the  deepest  attachment, 
and  told  me  the  tale  of  that  little  black  familiar  which 
swings  yonder.     Yours  is  a  peculiar  name." 

Tricot rin's  eyes  laughed  a  little. 

"Is  it?    It  is  a  simple  oue  enough." 

"Of  what  part  of  the  country,  may  I  ask?" 

"A  cosmopolitan  has  no  country." 

"Bat  even  a  cosmopolitan  must  have  parentage — race 
— birthplace  ?" 

"Must  he?  Well,  a  bohemian  need  have  none  of  the 
three.  He  is  a  great  deal  freer  than  his  prototypes,  the 
gipsies;  for  they  are  the  slaves  of  tribe-law  and  blood- 
intluence.  Like  Micha  Hall,  of  Mam  Tor,  he  can  write 
on  his  tombstone,  if,  indeed,  he  care  for  one: 


Quid  eram,  nescitis; 
Quid  sum,  nescitis 
Ubi  abii,  11  ostitis. 
Valetel" 


Estmere  smiled  at  the  epitaph;  and  felt  himself  com- 
pelled to  admit  the  hint  to  discontinue  his  inquiries.  He 
turned  to  another  subject. 

"The  Dante  had  been  long  yours?" 

"Yes.     Why  do  you  ask?" 

"Only  t<>  know  if  you  have  regretted  its  loss." 

"I  never  regret  anything    Whal  is  the  use?" 

"I  merely  meant,  that — it  would  give  me  pleasure  to 
restore  it  10  you  if  you  would  permit  me?" 

"I  never  take  shifts.  I  thank  you  for  your  intention,  all 
the  same." 

"Well — will  you  purchase  it,  then,  by  allowing  the 
chateau  to  hear  that  music  which  you  bestow  so  lavishly 
on  the  tavern  ?" 

"No,"  said  Tricotrin,  more  briefly  still.    "  I  do  not  play 


532  TRICOTRIN, 

for  any  wage,  nor  in  any  chateaux.     I  play  when  the 
spirit  moves  me ;  not  when  men  dictate." 

"  That  is  the  waywardness  of  all  genius,"  thought  Est- 
mere,  as  he  answered  aloud  : 

"  It  is  our  misfortune  that  you  are  so  antagonistic  to 
the  chateaux ;  and — you  surely  find  no  debtor  such  an 
ingrate,  no  master  such  a  tyrant,  as  the  People?" 

"  Perhaps.  But,  rather  I  find  it  a  dog,  that  bullies  and 
tears  where  it  is  feared,  but  maybe  made  faithful  by  gen- 
uine courage  and  strict  justice  shown  to  it." 

"  The  experience  of  the  musician,  then,  must  be  much 
more  fortunate  than  the  experience  of  the  statesman." 

"Why,  yes.  It  is  ungrateful  to  great  men,  I  grant; 
but  it  has  the  irritation  of  its  own  vague  sense  that  it  is 
but  their  tool,  their  ladder,  their  grappling-iron,  to  excuse 
it.  Still — I  know  well  what  you  mean  ;  the  man  who 
works  for  mankind  works  for  a  task-master,  who  makes 
bitter  every  hour  of  his  life  only  to  forget  him  with  the 
instant  of  his  death  ; — he  is  ever  rolling  the  stone  of  hu- 
man nature  upward  toward  purer  heights,  to  see  it 
recoil  and  rush  down  into  darkness  and  bloodshed.  I 
know " 

Estmere's  eyes  still  dwelt  on  him  with  keen,  grave 
study.  The  desire  he  had  to  become  acquainted  with 
this  man's  past,  and  present,  overcame  the  reluctance  in 
him  to  betray  what  might  seem  curiosity  or  intrusion. 

"I  wish  that  you  would  tell  me,"  he  said,  with  a  cer- 
tain hesitation,  "tell  me  without  epigram  or  argument, 
simply  how  it  arrives  that  a  man  of  your  talents  and  cul- 
ture— as  they  appear  to  me — occupies  with  content  a  po- 
sition where  the  world  can  so  little  perceive  those  powers, 
or  offer  them  their  due  honors  and  awards  ?" 

"  You  wish  to  know  thalV 

The  question  was  rapid  and  stern :  a  look  of  impatience, 
of  anger,  of  contempt,  swept  stormily  over  his  features  ; 
but  its  duration  was  brief,  his  careless  serenity  returned 
again,  as  he  answered  with  a  laugh : 

"Is  there  aught  so  wonderful  that  a  man  likes  his  lib- 
erty, likes  to  wander  at  his  ease,  likes  to  get  riddance  of 
the  trammels  of  a  civilization  which,  in  multiplying  wants 
and  desires,  has  multiplied  envy  and  greed  ?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         533 

"That  is  the  vagrant's  excuse  for  preferring  license  to 
law,  and  theft  to  honest  labor,"  said  Estmere  coldly. 
His  inherent  distrust  of  a  "  Character"  began  to  revive. 

Tricotrin  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"  Fardie  !  so  it  is,  poor  simpleton.  If  he  do  not  know 
that  he  who  enters  into  crime  subscribes  subservience  to 
the  weightiest  bondage  on  earth,  it  is  because  his  igno- 
rance is  as  strong  as  his  lusts.  And  who  teaches  him 
otherwise  ?  He  beholds  so  many  successful  sins  throned 
on  high  and  rolling  in  their  chariots  !" 

"  To  accuse  the  world  of  dishonesty  is  always  the  out- 
law's defense  of  his  own  stolen  goods,"  answered  Est- 
mere, in  his  chillest  tones.  "  But  I  started  no  general 
proposition.  I  asked  you  a  personal — perhaps  a  too  cu- 
rious— question.  I  may  seem  rude,  I  have  no  title  to  ask 
an  answer;  nevertheless,  I  must  repeat,  it  is  impossible 
for  me  to  reconcile  the  great  gifts  you  undoubtedly  possess 
with  the  career  you  are  content  to  pursue." 

Tricotrin's  eloquent  eyes  changed  their  expression 
many  times  through  the  few  sentences.  As  they  were 
concluded,  his  regard  grew  graver,  though  in  it  there  still 
laughed  the  delicate,  line  irony  of  his  careless  scorn. 

"  Well, — I  will  answer  you,  though  I  would  not  any 
one  else.  Tell  me  first,  though,  what  it  is  you  find  so 
reprehensible  in  my  career  ?  Is  it  my  consorting  with  a 
little  animal  who  bears  too  close  token  of  his  relationship  to 
us  to  be  an  agreeable  object  of  contemplation  to  man  ? — . 
is  it  because  there  is  only  virtue  in  your  velvet,  and  gross 
guilt  in  my  linen  blouse  ? — is  it  the  telling  of  plain  truths, 
the  calling  <>('  things  simply  by  their  names,  a  sin  that 
blackened  Sulla's  name  far  more  than  the  blood  that  he 
shed? — is  it  because  I  play  to  those  who  want  amusement 
instead  of  to  those  who  can  pay  for  it?  It  is  all  these,  I 
SUppOSe  :   but  what  else  ?" 

«  Simply — that  having  genius  you  do  not  care  to  bo 
worthy  of  it,  and  to  Worthily  bestow  it.  An  insolent 
answer,  you  will  say;  but  you  have  demanded  my 
opinion." 

"Certainly.  Well — lei  us  see.  What  is  bestowing  it 
worthily?     I  will  tell  you  a  story. 

"  Once  there  were  three  handmaidens  of  Krishna's;  in- 

45* 


534  TRICOTRIN, 

visible,  of  course,  to  the  world  of  men.  They  begged  of 
Krishna,  one  day,  to  test  their  wisdom,  and  Krishna 
gave  them  three  drops  of  dew.  It  was  in  the  season  of 
drought, — and  he  bade  them  go  and  bestow  them  where 
each  deemed  best  in  the  world. 

"Now  one  flew  earthward,  and  saw  a  king's  fountain 
leaping  and  shining  in  the  sun  ;  the  people  died  of  thirst, 
and  the  fields  and  the  plains  were  cracked  with  heat,  but 
the  king's  fountain  was  still  fed  and  played  on.  So  she 
thought,  '  Surely  my  dew  will  best  fall  where  such  glo- 
rious water  dances  ?' — and  she  shook  the  drop  into  the 
torrent. 

"  The  second  hovered  over  the  sea,  and  saw  the  Indian 
oysters  lying  under  the  waves,  among  the  sea-weed  and 
the  coral.  Then  she  thought,  'A  rain-drop  that  falls  in 
an  oyster's  shell  becomes  a  pearl ;  it  may  bring  riches 
untold  to  man,  and  shine  in  the  diadem  of  a  monarch. 
Surely  it  is  best  bestowed  where  it  will  change  to  a 
jewel '?' — and  she  shook  the  dew  into  the  open  mouth 
of  a  shell. 

"  The  third  had  scarcely  hovered  a  moment  over  the 
parched  white  lands,  ere  she  beheld  a  little,  helpless, 
brown  bird  dying  of  thirst  upon  the  sand,  its  b,right  eyes 
glazed,  its  life  going  out  in  torture.  Then  she  thought, 
'  Surely  my  gift  will  be  best  given  in  succor  to  the  first 
and  lowliest  thing  I  see  in  pain  V — and  she  shook  the 
dew-drop  down  into  the  silent  throat  of  the  bird,  that 
fluttered,  and  arose,  and  was  strengthened. 

"  Then  Krishna  said  that  she  alone  had  bestowed  her 
power  wisely;  and  he  bade  her  take  the  tidings  of  rain  to 
the  aching  earth,  and  the  earth  rejoiced  exceedingly. 
Genius  is  the  morning  dew  that  keeps  the  world  from  per- 
ishing in  drought.     Can  you  read  my  parable?" 

Estmere  bowed  his  head ;  touched  and  rebuked  by  the 
poetic  reproach. 

"  I  do  ; — forgive  me  that  I  ventured  to  pass  judgment 
on  you." 

"  I  forgive  !"  answered  Tricotrin,  simply ;  then,  with  the 
light  and  rapid  movement  that  was  common  with  him,  he 
sprang  like  a  deer  across  the  fresliet  of  water  by  which  he 
stood,  and,  plunging  into  the  depth  of  wood  that  lay  on 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         535 

its  farther  side,  was  lost  from  sight  before  the  other  could 
arrest  him. 

Estmere  sat  and  gazed  at  the  green  dense  wall  of  foli- 
age that  the  young  and  old  oaks  of  the  forest  placed  be- 
tween them.  He  was  astonished,  attracted,  perplexed; 
a  feeling  he  could  not  account  for  moved  him,  and  filled 
him  with  a  vexed  impatience  at  his  own  failure,  and  a 
deepened  interest  in  the  one  who  had  vanquished  him. 

There  was  that  about  this  fearless  grace,  this  poetic 
eloquence,  this  mingled  pride  and  carelessness,  the  one  as 
of  a  king,  the  other  as  of  a  gipsy,  that  fascinated  him, 
were  it  only  by  sheer  force  of  contrast ;  and  wrung  from 
him  a  reverence  that  he  was  almost  tempted  to  ridicule, 
yet  which  he  could  not  resist  despite  his  own  resentment 
of  it.  He  was  accustomed  to  control,  to  command,  to 
dominate,  to  criticise  men,  as  he  who  is  born  to  rule  them 
must  ever  do  if  he  would  hold  a  leader's  place ;  but  here 
was  one  man  with  whom  ho  could  do  none  of  these, — 
one  man  who  excited  all  his  strongest  prejudices,  who 
called  up  all  his  haughtiest  creeds,  but  who  won  on  him, 
and  who  challenged  his  attention  as  none  of  his  own  order 
ever  had  done. 

Set  he  was  impatient  with  himself  for  having  yielded 
to  such  an  influence. 

"  Because  he  has  the  gift  of  a  fair  tongue,  and  evades 
a  direct  inquiry  by  a  poetic  and  fanciful  allegory,  is  he 
any  the  truer  and  safer?  is  he  any  the  worthier  of  cre- 
dence ?"  he  thought,  as  he  rode  slowly  homeward  through 
the  only  road  intersecting  l ho  oak  glades. 

But,  although  lie  argued  with  his  impulse  of  faith  as  a 
weakness,  although  he  repeated  to  himself  that  the  charm 
which  had  lulled  his  suspicions  had  lieen  but  the  charm 
of  an  adventurer's  facile  and  valueless  eloquence,  an  in- 
stinct stirred  in  his  heart — the  instinct  of  one  truthful 
nature's  loyalty  unto  another — which  told  him  still  that 
the  doubt  was  dishonor  to  the  one  whom  it  attaindered 
with  suspicion. 

" A  clever  actor — what  more?  A  scholarly  outlaw, 
cunning  of  fence,  and  with  a  winning  tongue — that  is  all,'' 
he  mused,  and  strove  to  believe. 

But  the  memory  of  the  heroism  in  the  stone-cutter's 


536  TRICOTRIN, 

court  rebuked  him  ;  and  the  skepticism  engendered  by  the 
world  was  conquered  by  the  native  generosity  within 
hiin.  Instinct  trusted  where  reason  had  condemned. 
But  whether  reason  or  instinct  were  the  truer  guide,  both 
alike  impelled  him  to  know  far  more  of  this  wanderer : 
both  alike  made  him  think,  with  the  old  Homeric  line : 

"  He  only  is  a  living  man  ;  the  rest  are  gliding  shades." 


CHAPTER  LVII. 


In  the  balmy  rose-gardens  of  Villiers  a  group  like  one 
from  the  Decameron  strolled,  and  sat,  and  loitered,  in  the 
warmth  of  a  summer  day. 

Among  those  high-born,  languid,  amorous  idlers,  slay- 
ing their  hours  with  lightest  love  and  lightest  wit,  a  little 
rabbit,  white,  and  with  fleecy  hair,  ran  rapidly,  half 
frightened  at  the  novelty  of  its  intrusion,  half  enchanted 
with  the  low-hanging  roses,  at  which  it  nibbled  hurriedly, 
to  flee,  as  hurriedly,  with  its  mouth  full  of  rose-leaves. 
No  one  noticed  it ;  it  had  its  way  among  the  buds ;  and 
ventured  at  last  to  sit  demurely  still,  a  ball  of  snow 
among  the  crimson  blossoms. 

Suddenly,  and  with  clumsy  vehemence,  there  rushed 
to  chase  it  a  large-limbed,  brawny,  bronzed  woman  of  the 
farms,  breaking  in  where  none  of  her  class  had  ever  dared 
to  stray.  She  caught  the  terrified  thing,  and  shook  it 
angrily  ;  and  turned  her  eyes,  as  though  she  also  were 
stupefied  at  her  own  temerity,  on  the  face  of  the  great 
lady  nearest  her. 

"  Pardon,  madam,"  she  stammered,  with  uncouth, 
embarrassed  eagerness.  "  I  should  lose  my  place  if  it 
were  known  I  dared  come  in  here: — but  this  little  beast 
skipped  from  my  arms  as  I  passed  the  gates,  and  I  thought 
it  would  damage  the  roses,  and  so  I  ran — and  ran, — and 
I  never  saw  where  it  was  I  came.  Will  you  say  some- 
thing for  me  if  they  threaten  me  ?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         53 Y 

The  Duchess  de  Lira  smiled. 

"  Oh,  yes  ;  meanwhile  I  would  say — do  not  swing  that 
poor  rabbit  by  its  ears." 

The  woman  shifted  the  rabbit  at  once  to  an  easier  mode 
of  detention. 

"  It  is  very  good  of  madam  to  think  of  the  dumb  brute  !" 
she  muttered,  with  awkward  courtesy.  "  I  should  be 
loth  to  lose  it;  it  belongs  to  old  Virelois,  and  she  is 
lonely,  and  makes  friends  of  these  things — but  I  forget,  I 
have  no  business  here — forgive  my  rudeness,  madam." 

And  she  thrust  her  huge  coarse  form  through  the 
delicate  loveliness  of  the  rose  aisles  ;  her  wooden  shoes 
clattering  over  the  velvet  sward,  the  white  rabbit  trem- 
bling in  the  hard  grasp  of  her  hand.  She  went  over  park, 
and  meadow,  and  the  stepping-stones  of  a  brook ;  and 
threw  her  rabbit  aside  in  a  hutch  ;  and  entered  the  cool 
dairy-house,  and  sat  herself  down  on  a  stool. 

There  was  a  sullen  savage  pleasure,  and  a  coarse 
cynicism,  on  her  face  ;  and  her  wide  mouth  laughed  with 
a  broad  hoarse  laugh. 

"  I  thought  so — I  thought  so,  when  she  swept  past  me 
in  that  carriage!"  she  muttered;  in  a  brutish  glee,  with 
which  envy  mingled.  "I  said  I  should  know  that  dainty 
face  out  of  a  million, — there  was  a  look  that  knew,  in  her 
eyes,  when  I  said  the  old  granddam's  name.  God's 
mercy  I  that  bastard  a  duchess! — how  can  it  have  come 
to  pass?  They  said  she  was  dead. — and  we  thought  her 
in  shame, — and  all  this  while  she  has  lived  among 
princes.  Well — I  will  keep  my  tongue  till  the  young 
lord  comes;  but  it  shall  go  hard  if  1  do  not  hurt  her 
somehow.  She  to  be  an  aristocrat — that  nameless,  use- 
less, wanton,  insolent  thing! — it  kills  one  with  laughter 
only  to  think  on  it  !" 

And  she  laughed  again,  her  hard,  rough,  riotous  laugh, 
sitting  there  in  her  solitude;  and  she  thrusl  over,  with  a 
savage  'urn  of  her  foot,  the  wooden  stool  on  which,  one 
summer  evening,  the  child  whom  she  had  hated  had  sat, 
and  counted  her  magic  grapes,  and  crowned  herself  with 
her  magic  jasmine. 

While  she  thus  mused,  the  Duchess  de  Lira  had  gono 
within,  for  the  heat   grew  oppressive  even  in  those  cool, 


538  TRICOTRIN, 

shadowy,  fountain-filled  rose-gardens,  and  was  moving 
slowly  up  and  down  the  picture-galleries,  accompanied 
by  her  host. 

His  galleries  were  of  great  extent  and  value  ;  year  by 
year  he  had  added  to  his  collections,  until  their  excellence 
was  scarce  to  be  surpassed  ;  and  since  the  early  dishonor 
of  his  wedded  life  had  made  his  old  hereditary  home  dis- 
tasteful to  him,  he  had  gathered  together  all  that  was 
richest  and  rarest  of  his  possessions  in  this,  his  favorite, 
dwelling-place  of  Villiers. 

As  she  swept  to  and  fro  them,  she  conversed  of  art,  and 
of  many  things  beside  art,  with  the  airy  subtleties  of  wit 
that  a  woman  of  the  world  gains  from  society,  as  a  flower 
gains  its  hues  from  the  bees  which  lend  it  brilliancy 
while  they  steal  its  sweetness.  With  her,  indeed,  it  was 
rather  inborn  than  acquired.  Without  any  touch  of 
genius, — which  could  not  arise  from  a  temperament  so 
volatile,  so  self-centered,  so  full  of  gay  levity,  and  so  de- 
void of  impersonal  sympathies  as  was  hers, — she  yet  had 
talents  of  the  brightest  and  most  facile  kind. 

Unconsciously  to  herself,  and  unknown  to  others,  there 
was  sufficient  of  the  instinct  of  the  bohemian  in  her  to 
make  her  quick- sighted  to  the  weak  points  of  the  order 
to  which  she  now  belonged,  and  to  supply  her  with  deli- 
cate barbed  shafts  of  satire  to  aim  at  them.  The  influence 
that  had  been  so  long  upon  her  childhood  had  not  wholly 
lost  its  effect  upon  her  womanhood.  Though  all  her  tastes 
and  attachments  were  with  the  rank  to  which  she  had 
attained,  there  remained  sufficient  in  her  of  the  temper 
she  had  caught  from  her  earliest  teacher,  to  lead  her  into 
wayward  rebellion  against  some  of  its  codes  and  exac- 
tions. Something  of  the  salt  of  the  gay  trenchant  sar- 
casms she  had  been  fed  on  in  her  early  years  remained 
upon  her  lips,  and  not  seldom  seasoned  what  they  spoke. 

The  diversity,  the  contradiction,  lent  a  special  charm 
to  her  speech,  whenever  her  hauteur  and  her  coquetry 
were  both  in  abeyance  ;  as  they  both  were  with  Estmere. 

"What  golden  wit  she  possesses!"  he  thought:  and 
he  was  ignorant  that  it  was  but  the  reflex  of  the  wit  that 
he  had  once  encountered  in  a  bohemian  working  among 
the  vintagers  of  France. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         539 

Minds  like  Tricotrin's  scatter  their  gold  broadcast, 
careless  who  gleans  it:  minds  like  Viva's  catch  it  up  as 
it  falls,  and  wear  it  gracefully,  as  a  beautiful  woman  her 
diamonds,  making  more  brilliant  still  what  was  brilliant 
already. 

She  was  moreover  of  a  temper  like  that  of  many  who 
attain  to  an  eminence  not  theirs  from  birth;  she  had  only 
contempt  for  the  class  from  which  she  had  come,  but 
she  had  none  the  less  contempt  for  the  class  of  which  a 
victorious  chance  had  made  her  one.  And,  although  her 
mature  reason  rejected  in  ridicule  the  folly  of  her  childish 
credulity,  still  something  of  the  beliefs  instilled  into  her 
in  her  infancy  as  to  her  fairy  origin,  lingered  with  her; 
and  when  she  allowed  herself  to  deal  in  a  touch  of  Beau- 
marchais-like  epigram  on  those  who  "had  taken  the 
trouble  to  be  born,"  it  was  half  with  the  latent  conviction 
that  she  had  never  been  born  of  mortals  at  all ! 

She  was  at  no  time  more  seductive  than  in  one  of  these 
moods  of  fantastic  rebellion  and  satire;  and  her  com- 
panion allowed  himself  to  be  beguiled.  If  in  her  absence, 
analyzing  her  words,  he  often  wondered  wherein  the  se- 
duction of  them  had  lain,  none  the  less  when  he  entered 
her  presence  would  their  charm  become  irresistible  to  him 
again. 

As  their  converse  at  length  ceased,  he  bade  her  seat 
herself  where  he  pointed,  to  note  the  effect  of  light  on 
the  heads  of  a  Liberi  opposite. 

She  obeyed;  and  as  her  eyes  went  to  the  Liberi  they 
rested  also  on  the  picture  hanging  next  it, — the  portrait 
of  the  boy  with  the  dead  water-fowl.  She  saw  that 
they  were  now  on  the  same  spot  where  once  the  old  cus- 
todian of  the  galleries  had  told  her  the  story  of  that 
painting. 

"You  regretted  him  so  much  in  your  childhood — did 
you  not?"  she  said  softly,  forgetful  for  the  moment  that 
she  ought  not,  in  wisdom,  to  show  any  prior  knowledge 
of  these  galleries;  and  that  the  narrative  was  one  never 
heard  in  the  world  of  her  own  present  station. 

Estmere  started. 

"  Regretted  whom?"  he  asked. 

She  colored  with  annoyance  at  her  own  unconsidered 


540  TRICOTRIN, 

"s. 

impulse  and  unthinking  folly,  but  it  was  now  too  late  to 
recede. 

"  Your  young  brother — that  boy  there  with  the  water- 
bird  in  his  hand,"  she  made  answer.  "I  heard  his  story 
once  :  long,  very  long,  ago." 

"  His  story  1     Who  could  tell  it  you  ?" 

"An  old  servant  of  yours  ;  when  I  was  a  mere  child. 
But  the  tale  and  the  portrait  impressed  themselves  on 
me;  as  such  things  will  upon  children's  malleable  minds." 

"  I  never  knew  that  your  presence  ever  before  now 
honored  Villiers  ?"  . 

"  Oh — it  was  but  for  a  few  hours.  I  was  brought  to 
see  the  chateau :  you  must  have  been  absent,  of  course. 
I  was  quite  a  child;  but  that  picture's  story  stamped  it- 
self on  my  memory." 

"  I  wonder  you  heard  it.  I  had  hoped  my  servants 
had  known  my  wishes  too  well  for  them  to  have  gossiped 
of  my  family  histories." 

"It  was  an  old  white-haired  man  who  narrated  it.  I 
dare  say  because  I  pressed  eager  unscrupulous  questions 
upon  him — it  is  so  long  since  then  ;  I  have  forgotten." 

"I  can  divine  whom  you  mean.  He  is  dead.  Blame 
is  useless." 

"Yet  you  are  angered  ?" 

"  Well — it  is  always  cause  for  annoyance  to  find  that 
those  who  held  a  trust  could  not  keep  it;  and  I  am,  per- 
haps, inclined  to  be  as  severe  on  those  who  speak  blab- 
bing words  as  on  those  who  speak  false  ones." 

The  color  left  her  cheek  a  little  where  she  leaned  it  on 
her  hand,  as  she  sat  in  the  Louis  Quinze  chair  that  he 
had  wheeled  for  her  use. 

"  Bwt  the  history  is  a  noble  one  for  any  to  tell  or  to 
hear  ?"  she  said  at  length. 

"It  is  so  indeed;  of  a  most  noble  madness.  But  can 
you  not  well  conceive  that  the  pain  of  having  inherited 
my  lands  and  title  at  the  cost  of  my  brother's  death — a 
death  self-sought — has  never  wholly  passed  away  from 
me,  has  never  wholly  ceased  to  taint  them  with  a  certain 
sense  of  wrong  and  usurpation  ?" 

"  Yes.     I  can  comprehend  that." 

Her  eyes  answered  him  better  than  her  words  ;  he  had 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         541 

the  power  which  only  one  other  possessed,  of  awakening 
thoughtfulness,  emotion,  and  sympathy,  in  this  careless 
and  vivacious  nature. 

"And  there  was  yet  more  than  this,"  pursued  Estmere, 
the  ice  of  reserve  unbroken  for  so  many  years  melting  at  her 
touch.  "  There  was  the  sense  of  my  father's  brutal  injus- 
tice, his  inordinate  favoritism  to  myself,  his  most  culpable 
cruelty  to  his  first  wife,  and  to  her  son,  all  of  which  drove 
the  boy  to  his  abandonment  of  his  just  heritage.  It  was 
a  great  crime — a  crime  that  in  my  sight  still  stains  my 
race.  If  the  boy  had  given  any  ground  for  the  hate 
borne  to  him,  it  might  have  been  more  pardonable ;  but 
he  gave  none.  lie  was  of  exceeding  comeliness  and 
grace,  as  you  see  there  ;  full  of  high  courage,  of  high 
genius,  of  high  promise;  such  an  heir  as  the  proudest 
and  most  fastidious  might  have  regarded  with  pride  and 
pleasure.  He  was  almost  perpetually  neglected;  when 
remembered,  remembered  only  to  be  taunted,  goaded, 
driven  wild  with  bitter  ironies  cast  at  his  dead  mother. 
I  was  many  years  younger  than  he;  but  I  can  still  recall 
the  scenes  that  I  witnessed  in  infancy,  and  the  terror  I 
felt  at  seeing  my  father's  fury  fall  on  the  head  of  my  be- 
loved companion ;  for  I  loved  him  well  indeed.  Tome 
he  was  always  gentle,  generous,  most  infinitely  patient, 
as  youths  of  his  age  are  very  rarely  with  children.  My 
early  life  was  literally  made  desolate  by  his  loss " 

He  paused,  and  shaded  his  eyes  with  his  hand  as  he 
gazed  at  the  portrait. 

"  I  grieve  that  I  awakened  a  memory  so  painful,"  she 
murmured.     "  Is  it  certain  that  he  perished  ?" 

"Ascertain  as  any  death  can  be  where  the  body  can- 
not be  found  for  burial.  There  was  no  doubt  left,  indeed. 
The  words  he  murmured  over  my  bed,  and  which  I,  half 
asleep,  thought  the  words  of  a  dream,  proved  what  his 
intention  had  been.  It  would  never  be  possible  to  re- 
cover anything  from  the  ring  of  water  around  Heauina- 
noir.  It  has  deep  clefts  and  bottomless  boles,  and  sweeps 
out  away  to  the  western  seas.  Moreover,  an  old  wo  man- 
servant bore  witness  to  having  seen  him  by  twilight 
plunge  in;  but  she  missed  him  from  sight,  and  thought 

46 


542  TRIC0TR1N, 

nothing  of  it,  as  he  was  accustomed  to  swim,  and  dive, 
and  almost  live  in  the  waters,  like  any  bittern  or  gull. 
Immediate  search  was  made  in  every  direction  for  him  ; 
inquiries  were  everywhere  instituted  ;  but  it  was  con- 
sidered as  conclusively  proved  that  he  must  have  been 
drowned  in  the  moat.  A  mausoleum,  inscribed  to  that 
effect,  was  erected  by  my  father.  His  remorse,  though 
utterly  unavailing,  was  sincere.  Remembering  what  I 
do  of  Chanrellon's  nature,  I  can  well  imagine  how  insult 
and  false  accusation  hurled  him  headlong  to  that  insane 
self-sacrifice." 

"  He  was  accused  of  taking  jewels,  was  he  not?" 

"  Yes  !  such  a  senseless,  coarse,  frantic  suspicion  ! — as 
if  a  boy  who  came  of  our  race,  and  of  his  mother's  bold, 
sea-born,  free  people,  could  have  turned  thief!" 

"  Were  the  diamonds  ever  found  ?" 

"  Never.  Their  loss  was  heavy,  for  they  had  historical 
as  well  as  an  enormous  pecuniary  value." 

"  Did  you  ever  suspect  any  one  ?" 

He  gave  a  quick,  broken  sigh. 

"In  later  years  I  have  thought  that  the  criminal  was 
most  likely  a  Greek  youth  in  the  household;  a  penniless 
Athenian,  pampered  by  my  father's  caprices;  a  scorpion 
who  stung  the  hands  that  fed  and  befouled  the  hearth 
that  warmed  him !  But  I  might  be  in  error — it  was  but 
conjecture." 

He  spoke  with  effort.  She  was  silent,  knowing  how 
deeply  and  in  how  cruel  a  wound  this  scorpion  had  thrust 
its  sting. 

"  Your  son  bears  that  title  of  Chanrellon  now  ?"  she 
asked,  seeking  refuge  in  a  commonplace. 

"  It  is  the  second  title  of  the  house." 

"  Does  he  resemble  your  brother  in  the  least  ?  There 
is  no  portrait  of  him  here  ?" 

"  None.  There  are  some  at  Beaumanoir.  He  has  a 
womanish  beauty." 

"  I  have  heard  that  he  is  not  all  that  you  desire;  is  it 
true  ?" 

"  He  is  nothing  that  I  desire  !  But — we  live  almost 
as  strangers." 

"  That  seems  terrible  ?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAFF  AND   STRAY.         543 

"  It  is  terrible.     It  is  terrible  to  me  that  bis  mother's 

son  should  bear  my  name." 

His  voice  had  passion  and  emotion  in  it ;  and  his  head 
was  turned  from  her  as  he  spoke.  She  was  the  only  liv- 
ing creature  to  whom  he  had  ever  spoken  of  his  dishon- 
ored wife.     She — the  woman  whom  he  loved. 

"And  there  ever  lived  one  who  could  forsake  you  /" 
she  thought,  as  for  one  moment  she  beheld  all  tbe  secret 
torture  which  his  pride  and  his  dignity  had  so  long  kept 
veiled  from  the  gaze  of  any  human  eyes.  Ere  she  could 
answer  him,  others  approached  them  from  the  western 
end  of  the  gallery.  He  took  his  hand  from  the  back  of 
her  chair  and  moved  slightly  away. 

"  I  am  not  sure,  madam,  now,  that  I  have  placed  you 
right  for  the  St.  Catherine,"  he  said,  with  his  habitual 
tone.  "  Liberi  is  a  favorite  with  me;  there  is  so  exqui- 
site  a  softness  about  his  female  heads." 

They  were  no  more  alone  that  day,  and  he  sought  no 
other  opportunity  to  be  in  solitude  with  her;  but  the 
words  that  had  been  uttered  had  formed  a  link  between 
them.  She  felt  nearer  to  him  than  she  had  ever  done. 
She  felt  that  lie  had  said  to  her  what  he  would  have 
Uttered  to  DO  other. 

A  few  days  later,  a  young  man,  in  his  favorite  summer- 
villa,  among  the  Austrian  woods  of  a  fashionable  mount- 
ain-side resort,  whither  he  had  brought  all  the  levities, 
the  extravagancies,  the  vices,  and  the  ennui  of  his  life, 
received  a  coarse,  ill-spelt  missive,  of  a  few  lines  only. 
It  looked  the  clumsy  scrawl  of  a  cowherd,  or  a  charcoal- 
burner;  yet  he  read  it  with  an  attention  which  he  (lid  not 
concede  to  many  elegant,  perfumed,  neglected  letters  that 
came  with  it;  for  the  writer  had  been  a  panderer  to  his 
worst  sins;  a  she  wolf,  who  would  bring  him  any  lamb 
within  her  range;  a  brute,  who  served  hi.--  crimes  faith- 
fully for  sheer  greed  of  gold  ;  and  she  wrote  in  the  patois 
of  her  province: 

"  My  Lord,  —  [f  you  have  not  forgot  that  fair  fool  that 
escaped  \  on  here  year-  ago, — 1  hat  t  bing  they  called  Viva, 

— come  hither,  and  let  me  have  speech  with  you.     There 
is    up  at   the  house  a  grand  aristocrat,  who  they  say  will 


544  TRICOTRIN, 

wed  with  the  Earl,  your  father ;  and  if  ever  that  bastard 
whom  you  fancied  lived,  she  lives  still  of  a  surety  in  this 
duchess.  She  carries  herself  like  an  empress  ;  and  it 
seems  a  mad  freak  for  me  to  be  bold  to  write  this  of  her ; 
but  I  found  her  out  by  a  look  in  the  eyes,  and  I  dare  swear 
I  am  not  mistaken. 

"  I  am  at  my  lord's  service  ever, 

"Annette  Veuillot. 
"Writ  at  this  dairy  of  Villiers,  on  the  10th  day  of 
June." 


CHAPTER  LVIII. 

The  afternoon  sun  was  hot  and  cloudless  over  all  the 
country  by  the  Loire.  The  barges  and  the  rafts  dropped 
lazily  down  the  stream,  with  loads  of  fruit,  of  vegetables, 
or  of  fresh-mown  hay.  The  women  were  washing  their 
linen  in  places  where  the  rocky  shore  made  a  shallow 
creek,  or  the  grass  grew  lush  and  long,  sloping  to  the 
water's  edge.  The  laborers  were  at  work  among  the 
vines,  whose  blossoms  were  just  set,  and  changing  into 
grape-buds.  The  horses  of  the  towing-boats  plodded 
lazily  on  in  the  warmth,  while  the  drowsy  hum  of  insects 
filled  the  air. 

There  was  nothing  changed  in  the  out-door  life,  since 
the  time  that  a  child  of  fifteen  years  had  sat  dreaming 
among  the  swallow-swarming  ivy,  and  weaving  fancies 
of  an  unknown  world,  while  she  watched  the  old  boat- 
man mend  his  striped  tanned  sail. 

The  boatman  was  dead,  and  the  sail,  by  his  will,  had 
enwrapped  him  as  his  shroud,  where  he  lay,  under  the 
orchids  and  the  vervain  that  blossomed  over  his  grave: 
but  the  song  of  the  birds,  and  the  laugh  of  the  raftsmen, 
and  the  noise  of  the  water-wheel,  and  the  voices  of  the 
washing-women,  bubbled  on  unaltered,  through  the  length 
of  the  dreamy,  sultry,  fragrant,  summer  day. 

Above  one  curve  of  the  river,  where  the  old  dead  boat- 
man had  used  to  sit  and  mend  the  rents  of  his  sail  in  the 


TEE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         545 

shade,  a  thrush  was  singing  its  little  heart  out  upon  a 
plume  of  pear-tree  blossom.  The  house-door  stood  wide 
open,  with  the  sun  streaming  in  over  the  bare,  clean, 
wooden  floor.  A  cluster  of  pigeons  was  balanced  on  the 
edge  of  a  brown  earthen  dish,  eating  its  grain  undis- 
turbed. A  great  knot  of  white  lilies,  and  moss  roses, 
thrust  in  a  broad  pan  of  water,  filled  the  house  with  per- 
fume ;  all  was  still,  and  bright,  and  warm,  and  full  of 
peace :  and  above  in  a  little  chamber  an  old  woman  was 
dying,  the  death  that  to  age  is  release. 

She  had  been  born  here,  in  these  vine  countries,  when 
the  tocsin  was  the  only  chime  that  the  church-bell  rang, 
and  when  the  waters  of  the  Loire  were  choked  with  the 
corpses  they  floated  to  the  sea.  She  had  lived  here 
through  childhood,  and  girlhood,  and  womanhood  ;  work- 
ing hardly,  in  field  and  vineyard,  through  the  changes  of 
the  season  ;  bronzed  in  the  torrid  noons,  and  bitten  with 
the  winter  blasts;  bearing  burdens  with  the  patience  of 
the  mule,  and  brightening  beneath  the  slightest  touch  of 
mirth,  like  crocuses  beneath  the  first  spring  sun.  She 
had  been  wedded  here,  and  here  borne  her  three  sons; 
and  here  been  widowed,  and  of  her  sons  bereaved ;  mid 
here  beheld  her  eldest-born's  sole  child  die,  in  a  weakly 
infancy,  of  the  hard  food  that  alone,  stood  betwixt  her 
and  her  starvation. 

And  here,  also,  the  long,  heroic,  patient,  unrewarded 
life  was  ended:  a  mystery  of  pain,  and  conflict,  and 
courage,  and  endless  labor,  and  ceaseless  effort,  all  passed 
away  in  silence,  and  unrecognized^  of  men. 

She  lay  dying  in  the  little  darkened  chamber,  while  tho 
bird  sang  among  the  fruit-trees. 

Each  morning,  in  the  luscious  summer-time,  she  had 
made  her  slow  way  out  into  the  porch,  and  sitting  there 
had  gazed  with  dim  eves  out  into  the  sunshine,  with  the 
expectant  look  of  one  who  wait-  and  watches  ever  on  her 
face.  Each  day  in  the  still  cool  spring-time,  when  tin1 
pink  Kud.-  of  the  chestnuts  were  thrusting  through  the 
bark,  ami  the  violets  made  purple  every  waste  space  of 
ground,  she  had  sat  by  her  open  casement,  looking  up  the 

reach  of  the  river,  with   the   unrest  of  a  baffled  hope  told 
in  the  nervous  movement  of  her  withered  hands.      Bach 

411* 


546  TRICOTRIN, 

night,  when  night  fell  at  length,  she  had  suffered  herself 
to  be  led  away,  looking  with  a  piteous  appeal  ill  the  face 
of  her  handmaiden,  as  she  muttered,  "  To-morrow  ?"  And 
the  little  girl,  ill  knowing  what  she  meant,  but  desiring 
to  give  comfort,  had  always  smiled,  and  murmured  back, 
"  To-morrow  !  oh  yes — to-morrow." 

But  the  morrow  had  never  come  ;  and  the  few  river- 
people  and  vine-laborers  who  alone  knew  her  had  said 
among  themselves  that  it  could  never  come  : — would  Paris 
give  back  its  prey? 

Grand'mere  sought  the  sight  of  one  whom  Paris  had 
devoured  ;  what  avail  was  that.  ? 

The  little  silvery  cadence  of  the  bell  that  rang  before 
the  coming  of  the  host  had  sounded  over  the  threshold, 
and  across  the  breadth  of  the  stream,  until  the  bargemen 
and  the  rowers  on  the  river  heard  the  faint  musical  herald 
of  a  passing  soul,  and  crossed  themselves,  and  murmured 
an  Ave  in  the  hushed  hot  day. 

The  golden  rod  had  touched  with  its  anointed  oil  the 
breast,  and  brow,  and  feet,  of  the  old  dying  woman.  The 
blessed  bread  and  wine  had  been  placed  to  the  withered 
lips  which  the  religion  that  they  symbolized  had  never 
fed  during  the  famished  hours  of  many  bitter  winters. 
The  priest  had  gone  once  more  across  the  threshold,  with 
the  silver  bell  shedding  its  soft  cadence  over  the  river  and 
the  vine-fields. 

The  ebbing  and  exhausted  life  was  left  in  solitude  once 
more,  with  no  other  watcher  than  the  little  peasant 
maiden,  weeping  sorely  because  she  had  no  answer  with 
which  to  respond  to  the  one  prayer,  sounding  ceaselessly 
upon  the  silence: 

"  Will  she  not  come  ? — before  I  die  ?" 

With  blind  wide-open  eyes,  that  had  a  mute  and  terrible 
appeal  within  them,  grand'mere,  seeing  no  more  the  light 
through  the  open  lattice,  hearing  no  more  the  song  of  the 
thrush  in  the  pear-blossom,  but  with  one  memory  only 
living,  still  muttered  this  ever  and  ever  where  she  lay  : 

"  Will  she  not  come  ? — before  I  die  ?" 

For,  through  the  paralysis  of  death,  the  longing  of  the 
heart  still  lived. 

Through   all  the   length  of  the   years  she  had  been 


TITE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         547 

patient,  with  the  infinite  hopeless  patience  of  old  age,  that 
sinks  ever  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  frozen  desolation 
of  its  winter,  and  for  which  no  spring  can  ever  dawn,  to 
change  and  beam  on  the  eternal  cold. 

But  now, — dying, — the  long  silent,  uncomplaining 
agony  broke  out  in  one  great  desire,  that  was  all  the 
wandering  senses  knew  :  lying  there,  blind  and  confused, 
and  stricken  motionless,  and  chilled  with  the  bitter  frost 
of  death,  she  yet  retained  memory  for  this.    . 

Would  her  eyes  never  behold,  nor  her  ears  hear,  the 
ouly  life  that  she  loved  ? — would  she  die  thus,  as  she  had 
been  left  to  live,  alone  ? 


CIIAPTER  LIX. 

At  the  Chateau  of  Villiers,  among  the  summer  luxuri- 
ance of  blossom,  the  snow-white  statues  "listened;  on  the 
rapid  waters,  gayly-painted  boats  floated  under  vine-hung 
branches;  do  wn  the  terraces  music  and  laughter  sounded ; 
in  the  orange-aisles  and  the  rose-gardens  men  and  women 
passed  their  idle  hours  in  gayety  and  indolence,  and  airy 
languid  loves  that  beguiled  the  fancy  and  never  roused 
the  passions. 

Among  them  Viva  sat,  playing  listlessly  with  a  gor- 
geous Indian  bird,  and  easting  careless  words  among  her 
court,  to  be  treasured  as  though  they  were  pearls  of 
precious  wisdom. 

A  great  fountain  sent  up  its  column  of  radiance  near 
her;  a  mass  of  dates  and  palms  screened  her  from  t  ho 
sun;  the  half-score  of  lovers  round  her  heard  her,  when 
she  chose  to  speak,  with  the  charmed  deference  which, 
often  denied  to  the  sayings  of  Bages,  is  ever  awarded  to 
the  fair  follies  of  a  beautiful  woman. 

She  was  supreme — she  was  absolute  sovereign  here; 
every  rival  paled  before  her;  the  envy  of  one  sex  and 
the  passion  of  another  gave  her  endless  assurance  of  her 
supremacy.     Life  was  perfect  to  her:  pleasures,  glories, 


548  TRICOTRIN, 

vanities,  luxuries,  votaries,  all  were  accumulated  in  her 
path  ;  and  the  new  spell  of  a  love,  which  she  had  long 
only  laughed  at,  was  thrown  around  her  at  last,  giving 
fresh  allurement  and  fresh  fascination  to  the  exercise  of 
that  sorcery  which  otherwise  had  threatened  soon  to  pall 
and  to  satiate  out  of  its  too  great  facility,  its  too  easily- 
acquired  dominion. 

Life  was  perfect  in  her  hands  ;  a  scepter  that  the  "  gay 
liar  youth"  made  her  credit  would  never  be  broken,  never 
cease  to  have  power  to  summon  all  charms  from  all  ends 
of  the  earth  to  her  usage  and  service. 

Pain — calamity — poverty — age  ;  these  existed,  she 
knew,  when  she  paused  to  think  of  them.  But  they 
were  only  words  ;  words  to  her  soundless  and  bodiless. 
With  her  they  had  naught  else  to  do.  Certain  sums, 
set  aside  from  her  wealth,  her  stewards  disposed  of  in 
charity  ;  so  much  clone  for  the  sake  of  her  conscience,  all 
else  was  dismissed  from  her  mind : — she  laughed  here  in 
the  midst  of  her  reses. 

Down  the  river,  which  beneath  the  slopes  of  Villiers 
flashed  in  its  broad  silver  band,  a  little  boat  glided  ;  with 
it  there  came  the  ringing  of  a  gentle  bell,  and  in  the  stern 
knelt  a  white-robed  chorister,  bearing  a  glittering  star 
aloft. 

It  was  the  Host,  being  borne  backward  reverently  to 
the  distant  township  whence  it  came. 

"How  prettily  the  bell  sounds!"  she  said,  forgetful, 
or  careless,  of  the  fact  that  the  little  procession  must 
have  traveled  to,  and  from,  some  dying-bed. 

The  boat  passed  out  of  sight;  the  tinkle  of  the  bell 
passed  off  the  air;  the  laughter  and  the  languid  wit  re- 
sumed their  reign  around  her. 

Awhile  later,  a  sealed  paper  was  brought  to  her;  a 
faint  flush  of  annoyance  went  over  her  face  as  she  saw 
the  superscription.  Her  host  alone  noted  it,  and  won- 
dered what  the  cause  could  be.  In  that  dazzling,  unworn 
life,  secure  upon  the  heights  of  riches  and  of  rank,  there 
could  be  no  mystery,  no  canker  ? 

Some  time  afterward,  she  took  an  opportunity  to  pass 
into  the  house  unobserved.  There  she  opened  the  letter. 
It  said,  briefly : 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         549 

"  Grand'mere  will  not  live  till  evening;  she  must  see 
you  to  die  in  peace.     I  wait  for  you  at  the  old  ferry." 

As  she  read,  all  the  ice  of  pride,  and  coldness,  and 
egotism  melted  from  her  heart.  She  gave  a  piteous  cry 
as  though  death  struck  herself.  All  base  and  selfish 
thought  died  out  from  her  ;  she  only  remembered  the  old 
creature  she  had  loved  through  the  .years  of  her  child- 
hood, and  whom  she  had  left  to  live  and  to  perish  in 
solitude. 

"Grand'mere!" — with  the  tender  homely  word  there 
came,  in  a  rush  of  countless  memories,  a  thousand  ties 
of  infancy  and  girlhood — ties  broken  by  her  with  the  gay 
scorn  of  a  liberated  youth, — ties  ruptured,  but  aching 
forever,  in  the  solitary  heart  of  a  forsaken  age. 

In  that  moment  a  tumult  of  remorse  awoke  in  her; 
transient  it  might  be,  but  violent  in  its  truth  and  in  its 
horror,  with  all  the  heat  and  force  of  her  native  impulses. 
She  forgot  self,  pride,  the  peril  of  exposure,  the  difficulty 
of  compliance  ;  she  forgot  all  except  the  debt  whose  pay- 
ment had  so  long  been  driven  off  and  might  now  be 
offered  but  too  late.  She  forgot  her  station,  her  domin- 
ion, her  distance  from  the  peasant  who  was  dying  yonder, 
her  cold  contempt  for  all  creatures  less  fair  and  fortune- 
favored  than  herself.  She  only  remembered  the  days,  so 
long  gone  by,  which  the  brown,  withered,  noble  face  of 
the  old  Loirais  had  been  the  first  on  which  her  eyes  un- 
closed at  dawn,  and  the  last  that  bent  over  her  as  she 
sank  to  Bleep. 

"  Grand'mere  !" — the  time  had  been  when  lisping  out 
the  word  she  had  clung  round  the  Deck  of  the  only  creat- 
ure who  had  ever  filled  to  her  in  any  sense  a  mother's 
place,  and  had  loved  her  with  all  a  child's  careless,  capri- 
cious, fond,  unthinking  love. 

The  place  was  three  leagues  off;  the  old  ferry,  long 
unused,  was  one;  the  way  w;is  long,  the  sun  was  burn- 
ing; she  (hired  not  order  horse,  or  carriage,  or  attendant, 
lest  it  should  be  learned  whither  and  with  whom  she 
went.  Trusting  to  chance  for  the  avoidance  of  all  notice, 
and  acting  only  on  the  spur  of  inconsidered  impulse,  she 
threw  a  long  cloak  over  her  dress,  concealed  her  lace  in 
a  thick  veil,  and  assured  herself  that  none  of  her   tire- 


550  TRICOTRIN, 

women  were  in  sight.  Then  she  passed  swiftly  down  an 
outer  staircase  which  led  from  one  of  her  balconies  into 
an  unfrequented  portion  of  the  grounds,  and  went  on 
through  the  sunlit  park  in  all  the  tremulous  haste  of  one 
whom  remorse  drives  and  fear  of  detection  wings. 

Once,  all  the  haughty  blood  in  her  flamed  in  hot  revolt 
at  this  secrecy,  which  seemed  so  kin  to  shame.  Once 
she  was  tempted  to  turn  back  and  order  out  an  equipage, 
and  let  all  the  world  know  where  she  went.  Her  errand 
was  a  righteous  one  ;  why  hide  it  as  a  shame  ? 

But  the  nobler  impulse  was  beaten  back  by  the  dread 
lest  any  of  her  world  should  know  that  story  of  her  past. 
She  felt  that  she  would  rather  die  a  thousand  deaths  than 
that  those  who  held  her  now  in  such  high  honor  should 
ever  learn  that  she  had  once  been  found  under  those 
river-woods — a  nameless  foundling  child. 

The  summons  had  fallen  like  a  thunderbolt  upon  her, 
smiting  her  conscience  from  its  sleep.  But  though  she 
obeyed  it,  through  all  that  still  survived  in  her  of  the 
purer  faiths  of  her  earlier  days,  she  still  recoiled  with 
loathing  from  the  mere  thought  that  those  who  knew  her 
as  she  was  should  ever  dream  that  she  was  not  of  their 
order, — should  ever  dream  the  time  had  been  when  she 
had  owed  bread  to  a  bohemian's  alms.  Rather  than  that 
the  truth  should  ever  dawn  upon  the  world  where  now 
she  reigned,  she  took  the  stain  of  secrecy  upon  her,  and 
fled  on  through  the  sunny  glades,  not  as  one  who  went 
to  do  a  deed  of  mercy,  but  as  a  criminal  who  dreaded 
lest  the  passing  of  her  footsteps  should  be  tracked  and 
followed. 

Once  she  thought  of  Estmere  ;  the  soilless  greatness, 
the  integral  truthfulness,  of  his  life  seemed  for  the  mo- 
ment to  rebuke  this  falseness  of  base  pride  that  screened 
a  just,  act  like  a  treacherous  crime.  But,  with  that 
thought,  rose  also  the  memory  of  his  absolute  and  un- 
bending pride,  the  pride  of  an  Order,  the  pride  of  the 
Roman  Optimate;  and  this  sufficed  to  drive  back  once 
more  the  wavering  impulse  in  her. 

The  large  startled  eyes  of  the  grazing  deer  seemed  to 
her  like  the  eyes  of  the  world  fastened  on  her  ;  the  sight 
of  a  distant  charcoal-burner  passing  down  a  far-off  avenue 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         551 

made  her  dread  recognition  and  pursuit.  But  the  tract 
of  the  park  through  which  she  passed  was  wild  and  un- 
frequented; and  the  way  through  the  vineyards  and 
win  ids  to  the  river,  the  instinct  of  early  impressions  made 
plain  to  her. 

The  winding  paths  down  the  terraced  slopes,  the  scarce- 
seen  roadway  through  vine-fields  that  seemed  endless,  the 
old  broken  hut,  brown  and  roofless,  and  climbed  all  over 
with  green  flowering  weeds,  that  marked  the  spot  where 
a  ferry,  long  shifted  higher  up  the  waters,  once  had  stood, 
— all  these  things,  utterly  forgotten  for  many  years,  be- 
came familiar  to  her  with  that  pang  of  remembrance,  vivid 
almost  to  horror,  with  which  the  haunts  of  childhood 
startle  the  mind  from  which  they  have  faded  until  they 
arc  revisited. 

Against  the  ruined  boat-house  was  a  sailing-boat;  in  it 
a  man  stood  erect  with  an  oar  in  his  hand  thrust  against 
the  long  grasses  and  reeds  of  the  bank. 

The  landscape  swam  in  mist  before  her  sight;  just  thus 
had  she  seen  him  so  many  times  in  other  years,  when  the 
hour  of  his  coming  was  the  golden  hour  in  her  summer, 
and  -she  could  have  dreamt  of  no  joy  on  earth  or  water 
so  great  as  to  sail  with  him  down  the  long,  calm,  lumin- 
ous reach  of  the  river. 

How  near,  and  yet  how7  far,  that  time  looked  to  her! 
It  seemed  to  kill  in  her  all  her  own  identity. 

Which  was  in  truth  she? — that  Loirais  child  who  had 
basked  in  the  sunlight,  bathing  her  laughing  face  and  her 
bright  tresses  in  the  stream;  or  the  proud,  courted,  un- 
rivaled woman,  received  in  all  the  palaces  of  Europe? 

Seeing  her,  he  sprang  on  shore,  and  threw  a  rough 
plank  betwixl  the  hank  and  boat,  and  held  his  hands  out 
to  her  to  aid  her. 

"You  are  come;  that  is  well,''  he  said,  gravely,  with 
no  token  of  surprise,  with  the  air  of  one  whose  command, 
being  given,  was  of  necessity  obeyed.  She,  even  in  that 
moment,  noticed  ii  ;  ami  dreamily  wondered  whence  this 
man,  who  was  in  social  >iaius  lint  a  wanderer,  a  vaga- 
bond, had  gained  thai  calm  and  kingly  authority  to  which 
even  she  unresistingly  succumbed. 

She   sank  down  at  the   bottom  of  the   boat,  worn  out 


552  TRICOTRIN, 

with  the  heat,  the  haste,  the  toil  in  the  sultry  day  to  which 
she  was  so  little  used. 

"I  am  in  time?"  she  asked  him  breathlessly.  He 
spread  a  loose  sail  on  a  spar  so  that  it  sheltered  her  wholly 
from  the  sun,  and  from  the  sight  of  any  passing  on  the 
shore  or  in  river  craft. 

"  I  cannot  tell,"' he  answered  her  gently  ;  "I  trust  so." 

She  said  nothing.  The  old  influence  that  he  had  used 
to  possess  stole  over  her  again ;  she  felt  heart-sick, 
ashamed,  covered  with  remorse.  She,  with  all  her  terri- 
tory, her  treasures,  her  influence,  felt  humiliated  and 
stricken  with  contrition  in  the  presence  of  the  man  to 
whom  she  owed  a  debt  that  she  had  never  paid,  and  that 
she  never  could  pay. 

He  was  silent  also,  setting  the  little  sail  to  catch  the 
faint  flutter  of  the  soft  south  wind,  and  steering  down  the 
golden  gleaming  brilliance  of  the  river,  running  with  the 
tide.  The  shore  glided  slowly  past  them  ;  the  brown  sail 
caught  colors  of  glory  from  the  sun ;  the  sweet  odors  of 
new-cut  hay  filled  the  air  from  grass-laden  barges ;  the 
women,  sitting  in  the  rock-hewn  grape-hung  cabins  of  the 
banks,  looked  up  as  they  drifted  by,  and  laughed,  and 
called  across  the  great  breadth  of  the  stream,  "Ah-ha,  is 
it  thee,  Tricotrin  ?" 

But  he  for  once  never  answered  where  he  sat  at  the 
helm.  He  sailed  his  race  with  death,  and  with  every 
beat  of  the  tide  there  went  a  beat  of  a  human  heart  that 
would  soon  be  still  forever. 

And  thus  she  went  back  to  the  home  of  the  swallows. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         553 


CHAPTER  LX. 

Ever  and  anon  the  old,  dark,  eager,  noble  face  was 
lifted  from  its  pillow,  and  the  withered  lips  murmured 
three  words  : 

"  Is  she  come  ? 

For  Tricotrin  had  bent  over  her  bed,  and  had  mur- 
mured, "I  go  to  seek  her,  she  is  near;"  and  grand'mere 
had  believed  and  been  comforted,  for  she  knew  that  no  lie 
passed  his  lips.  And  she  was  very  still ;  and  only  the 
nervous  working  of  the  hard,  brown,  aged  hand  showed 
the  longing  of  her  soul. 

Life  was  going  out  rapidly,  as  the  flame  sinks  fast  in  a 
lamp  whose  oil  is  spent.  The  strong  and  vigorous  frame, 
the  keen  and  cheery  will,  had  warded  oil'  death  so  long 
and  bravely;  and  now  they  bent  under,  all  suddenly,  as 
those  hardy  trees  will  bend  after  a  century  of  wind  and 
storm, — bend  but  once,  and  only  to  break  forever. 

The  red  sun  in  the  west  was  in  its  evening  "lory  ;  and 
through  the  open  lattice  there  were  seen  in  the  deep  blue 
of  the  sky,  the  bough  of  a  snow-blossonied  pear-tree,  the 
network  of  the  ivy,  and  the  bees  litiiiiiijlii i^-  among  the 
jasmine  flowers.  From  the  distance  there  came  faintly 
the  musical  cries  of  the  boatmen  down  tin:  river,  the 
voices  of  the  vine-tenders  in  the  fields,  the  singing  of  a 
throstle  on  a  wild  grape-tendril. 

Only,  in  the  little  darkened  chamber  the  old  peasant 
lay  i|iiite  still, — listening,  through  all  the  sweet  and  busy 
sounds  of  summer,  for  a  step  that  never  came. 

And  little  by  little  all  those  sounds  grew  fainter  on 
her  ear:  the  dullness  of  death  was  stealing  over  all  her 

senses;  and  all  she  heard  \\  as  the  SOng  of  the  thrush 
where  the  bird  swayed  on  the  vine,  half  in,  half  out,  of 
the  latt ice. 

But  the  lips  moved  still,  though  no  voice  came,  with 
the  same  words:  "Is  she  come?"  and  when  the  lips  no 

47 


554  TRICOTRIN, 

more  could  move,  the  dark  and  straining  wistfulness  of 
the  eyes  asked  the  question  but  more  earnestly,  more  ter- 
ribly, more  ceaselessly. 

The  thrush  sang  on,  and  on,  and  on ; — but  to  the 
prayer  of  the  dying  eyes  no  answer  came. 

The  red  sun  sank  into  the  purple  mists  of  cloud ;  the 
song  of  the  bird  was  ended ;  the  voice  of  the  watching 
girl  murmured — "  They  will  come  too  late  !" 

For,  as  the  sun  faded  off  from  the  vine  in  the  lattice, 
and  the  singing  of  the  bird  grew  silent,  grand'mere  raised 
herself  with  her  arms  outstretched,  and  the  strength  of  her 
youth  returned  in  the  hour  of  dissolution. 

"They  never  come  back!"  she  cried.  "They  never 
come  back ! — nor  will  she  !  One  dead  in  Africa, — and 
one  crushed  beneath  the  stone, — and  one  shot  on  the  bar- 
ricade. The  three  went  forth  together  ;  but  not  one  re- 
turned. We  breed  them,  we  nurse  them,  we  foster  them ; 
— and  the  world  slays  them  body  and  soul,  and  eats  the 
limbs  that  lay  in  our  bosoms,  and  burns  up  the  souls  that 
we  knew  so  pure."  And  she  went  where  they  went: — 
she  is  dead  like  them." 

Her  head  fell  back  ;  her  mouth  was  gray  and  parched, 
her  eyes  had  no  longer  sight ;  a  shiver  ran  through  the 
hardy  frame  that  winter  storms  and  summer  droughts 
had  bruised  and  scorched  so  long ;  a  passionless  and 
immeasurable  grief  came  on  the  brown,  weary,  age-worn 
face. 

"All  dead  !"  she  murmured  in  the  stillness  of  the  cham- 
ber, where  the  song  of  the  bird  had  ceased,  and  the  dark- 
ness of  night  had  come. 

Then  through  her  lips  the  last  breath  quivered  in  a 
deep-drawn  sigh,  and  the  brave,  patient,  unrewarded  life 
passed  out  forever. 

A  moment  later,  swift  uneven  steps  sprang  up  the  nar- 
row stairway,  and  into  the  gloom  of  the  little  room  came 
the  glory  of  a  woman's  loveliness. 

"Grand'mere!  grand'mere!"  she  cried,  as  she  threw 
herself  on  her  knees  against  the  couch. 

The  cry,  for  which  the  dying  senses  had  been  so  long 
strained  in  yearning  and  vain  desire,  fell  unheard  on  the 
ear  which  could  no  more  be  vexed  with  the  toiling  sounds 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAFF  AND   STRAY.         555 

of  the  travailing  world.  Calm,  responseless,  unutterably 
sad,  the  dead  face  looked  upward  in  mute  reproach. 

The  prayer  of  nine  long  years  was  answered  at  the 
last, and  the  answer  came  too  late. 

"  Grand'mere  !  grand'mere  !"  she  cried.  "  I  am  come  ! 
I  am  here  !     Oh,  look  at  me  once  ! — only  once  !" 

But  the  eyes  had  no  light,  the  lips  had  no  reply.  What 
avail  was  remorse? — its  anguish  could  not  reach  the  soul 
that  had  passed  away  from  all  earthly  pain  and  from  all 
mortal  love. 

She  came  too  late. 


CHAPTER  LXI. 


"Ah  !     How  T  Ion  the  myself!" 

She  spoke  in  agony,  with  the  tears  falling  fast  from  her 
eyes,  and  her  heart  aching  in  vain  Belf-reproach,  where 
she  stood  in  the  quaint,  dark  kitchen-chamber  that  she 
had  known  so  well  of  old.  All  her  .wanner,  richer, 
sweeter,  holier  nature  had  awakened,  and  quivered  under 
the  branding  iron  of  remorse.  She  looked  to  herself  so 
base,  so  cruel,  so  worthless  of  every  thought  of  tender- 
ness that  had  been  given  her  by  the  dead. 

The  unuttered  rebuke  of  that  colorless  face,  so  livid,  so 
old,  so  still  with  its  own  sublime  peace,  ha/1  pierced 
through  all  the  vanities  and  pride  and  egotism  of  her  life 
down  to  the  heart  of  her  youth,  which  still  beat  there  he- 
neat  h  them. 

Every  trifle  in  the  little  room  around  her,  every  homely 
and  familiar  cottage  thing  of  use,  came  back  on  her 
memory  wit  h  a  ]»ang. 

The  place  was  so  utterly  unchanged :  the  burnished 
coppers,  the  clean  brass  utensils,  the  strings  of  drying 
herbs  and  melons,  the  black  pol  simmering  over  1  he  wood 
embers  od  the  hearth,  the  white  ca1  sleeping  in  the  win- 
dow, the  oil-lamp  burning  on  the  low  oak  settle,  all  the 
common  things  of  daily  life  that  .-he  had    known  so  well, 


556  TRICOTRIN, 

were  all  there  unaltered  since  the  days  when  in  her  in- 
fancy her  feet  had  danced  upon  the  wooden  chairs  in  glee 
because  the  hot  milk  foamed  ready  for  her  morning  pot- 
tage. 

Not  one  of  them  was  changed ;  but  she  ! — —she  burst 
into  passionate  tears  as  she  thought  of  the  little,  gay, 
nameless  child  that  once  had  lived  and  laughed  amid 
these  lonely  things,  and  of  the  face,  now  set  in  death, 
whose  brown  worn  features  had  softened  to  such  tender 
grace  in  the  light  of  the  summer  morning  and  at  the 
mirth  of  the  infant's  play. 

Countless  memories  thronged  on  her ; — of  childish  pains 
and  angers,  of  feverish  hours  of  illness,  of  petulant  out- 
bursts of  willful  wrath,  of  April  storms  of  passing  griefs 
over  a  dead  bird  or  a  stray  kitten,  and,  through  all  these, 
of  the  patient,  gentle,  cheerful  endurance  of  a  love  that 
never  complained  and  never  wearied.  For  such  a  debt 
what  payment  had  been  great  enough  ? — and  all  that  she 
had  given  had  been  silence,  neglect,  oblivion, — the  triple 
coin  wherewith  Love  oftenest  is  paid. 

He  let  her  passion  spend  itself  silently. 

It  was  a  caustic  that  might,  perchance,  burn  out  the 
cankers  of  the  world  within  her  soul.  With  her  he  had 
no  bond  in  that  instant.  All  his  sympathy,  all  his  pity, 
all  his  reverence,  were  with  that  aged,  lonely,  dauntless 
life  that  had  been  left  to  ebb  out  in  solitude  ;  the  life  lived 
only  to  see  all  that  it  cherished  perish. 

The  first  words  he  spoke  were  brief,  as  he  raised  the 
drooping  wick  of  the  lamp. 

"Madam — it  were  best  you  went  homeward.  Your 
host  and  your  Order  must  not  know  that  you  weep  for  a 
peasant!" 

"Ah,  hush  !  I  merit  the  lash  of  your  sarcasm  and  of 
your  scorn,  God  knows,  yet — spare  me  them  now.  I 
cannot  bear  them  I" 

He  placed  the  lamp  back  on  its  settle. 

"I  but  remind  you, — would  you  have  it  known  that 
you  are  here  ?" 

She  started  with  a  throb  of  terror. 

"No — no!  Surely  there  may  be  means, — but, — I  have 
thought  of  myself,  alone,  so  long,  so  selfishly,  so  remOrse- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         557 

lessly.  I  can  only  think  of  har  now  !  I  have  been  so 
cruel,  so  heartless.  If  I  could  only  have  heard  her  speak 
to  me,  and  only  have  begged  once  for  her  forgiveness !" 

He  smiled,  very  wearily,  and  made  no  answer.  He 
knew  that  to  himself  she  repeated,  and  would  continue 
to  repeat,  the  ingratitude  and  the  neglect  that,  given  to 
the  dead,  now  caused  such  futile  and  vehement  remorse. 
But  of  this  his  own  lips  never  reminded  her. 

He  stood  silent,  with  the  dusky  lamplight  behind  him 
so  that  he  could  see  her  face,  while  his  own  was  screened 
from  her,  watching  her  with  a  strange  pain;  wondering 
vaguely  and  incredulously  if  this  exquisite  and  imperial 
woman,  who  moved  slowly  to  and  fro  the  narrow  room, 
could  be  in  truth  but  the  developed  life  of  the  young  child 
whose  dancing  naked  feet  had  moved  in  such  gay  measure 
to  the  old  peasant's  crooning  country-songs. 

He  had  suffered  much,  and  often,  since  the  last  day 
when  she  had  passed  out  from  under  the  low  brown  porch 
to  go  to  the  "great  world"  for  which  she  pined;  but  he 
had  never  suffered  as  he  did  now,  beholding  her,  for  the 
first  time,  under  that  roof  where  her  infancy  had  been 
sheltered  by  him. 

Once  she  paused  in  her  restless  passage  up  and  down 
the  chamber,  and  turned  her  lustrous  eyes  lull  on  him. 

"Ah  !  Tell  me  the  truth  ! — you  think  me  base  beyond 
redemption?" 

"  No,"  he  answered  her,  where  he  stood  in  the  deep 
shadow.     "1  think  you — very  human." 

"To  be  human,  then,  is  to  be  lower  than  the  dogs  that 
love  what  feeds  them?" 

"  Perhaps  1  The  dogs  will  love  the  hands  that  beat 
them.  There  is  none  of  that  love  among  such  fair  things 
as  you." 

Her  head  sank,  with  the  hot  blood  burning  in  her  face. 

"Why  did  you  not  keep  me  here?"  she  said,  with  im- 
petuous emotion.  "Why  did  you  not  tell  me  what  I 
should  become?  I  should  have  been  poor,  nameless,  un- 
known; hut  I  should  have  been  innocenl  at  least,  I 
should  have  done  the  duty  that  1  owed,  I  should  have 
helped  her  in  her  age,  and  soothed  her  in  her  death- 
agonies  1" 

47* 


558  TRICOTRIN, 

A  breath  that  was  almost  a  sob  caught  the  words  as 
she  spoke  them  :  she  little  heeded  the  blow  which  each 
dealt  to  the  heart  of  their  hearer. 

The  answer  which  sprang,  hot,  eloquent,  upbraiding, 
bitter  and  tender  at  once  to  his  lips,  he  restrained ;  he 
answered  her  briefly,  gently, — 

"  I  did  not  keep  you  against  your  will,  because, — you 
would  not  have  remained  innocent,  you  would  have  i'e- 
fused  to  accept  duty,  you  would  have  broken  into  peril- 
ous revolt,  in  such  a  life  as  the  life  you  alone  could  have 
led  here.  The  greatness  you  have  gained  would  not  now 
have  sown  evil  in  your  nature,  had  none  of  the  seeds  of 
evil  been  latent  there  ;  such  evil  is  sinless  to  the  world's 
creed,  in  a  patrician  woman  ;  it  would  have  been  evil 
accursed,  and  shameful,  and  wretched,  in  a  woman  name- 
less, and  penniless,  and  motherless,  and  consumed  with 
the  corrosion  of  discontent.  I  knew  you  better  than  you 
knew  yourself.  If  the  Duchess  de  Lira  be  heartless, 
merciless,  conscienceless,  what  would  the  actress,  the  ad- 
venturess, have  been  ?  Once  I  bade  you  repay  me  what 
you  deemed  you  owed,  by  keeping  ever  in  you  the  higher 
things  of  your  love,  and  truth,  and  courage.  I  was 
unwise  enough  to  dream  that  my  one  desire  would  be 
obeyed,  against  all  the  commands  of  your  passions,  your 
prides,  and  your  vanities.  Once  also  you  prayed  that 
death  might  come  to  you  if  ever  you  forgot  me :  the  grass 
would  have  grown  through  many  seasons  above  your 
grave  if  that  prayer  had  been  granted  1" 

A  cry  of  intolerable  suffering  broke  from  her. 

"  Say  a41  you  will !"  she  cried.  "  Your  hardest  words 
cannot  scourge  me  so  sharply  as  my  own  conscience  does. 
I  have  forgotten  ! — more  brutally,  more  shamelessly  than 
the  very  cattle  ever  forget  a  master  that  has  fed  and 
tended  them.  And,  yet,  I  have  remembered  too, — re- 
membered more  than  you  can  ever  dream.  At  times  my 
thoughts  of  you  have  been  an  agony.  At  times  my 
childhood  has  come  back  to  me  with  such  reproach  that 
I  could  have  found  strength  to  kill  myself.  At  times — 
in  all  the  intoxication  of  the  world — the  sound  of  your 
voice  has  seemed  to  steal  on  my  ear,  the  gaze  of  your 
eyes  has  seemed  to  haunt  me  as  I  went,  till  I  longed  for 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         559 

the  peace  of  your  presence  with  a  lost  child's  longing 
for  its  home  !  This  is  the  truth  ;  though  how  shall  you 
believe  me  in  witness  of  all  the  false  shame,  the  mad 
vanity,  the  infamous  ingratitude  of  my  life  ?  You  say 
that  I  should  have  been  far  worse  than  I  am,  had  I  re- 
mained with  you;  can  anything  be  worse  than  such  self- 
ishness and  such  oblivion  as  mine  ?  Besides, — you  are 
so  great,  so  true,  of  a  simplicity  so  noble,  of  a  justice  so 
divine,  your  influence  would  have  been  too  strong  on  me 
for  me  to  have  sunk  to  evil :  you  could  have  made  of  me 
what  you  would,  had  1  but  stayed  by  you  !" 

And  in  the  remorse  of  the  hour  it  did  indeed  seem  thus 
to  her ;  and  in  that  hour  she  beheld,  as  by  a  vision,  all 
that  her  life  would  have  been,  if  never  fevered  by  thirst 
for  gold  and  rank,  if  never  touched  by  the  fast-lengthen- 
ing shadows  of  falsehood,  if  never  drawn  into  that  fur- 
nace of  ambition  where  all  impulses  and  instincts  are 
fused  into  one  passion  ;  if  lived  in  peace  and  in  content- 
ment, purified,  and  strengthened,  and  raised  high  by  the 
loftiness  of  truth  and  of  self-sacrifice,  beneath  his  love 
and  law. 

In  that  one  hour  she  saw  that  she  had  forsaken  the 
gold  for  the  dross,  the  rock  for  the  reeds,  the  greater  for 
the  lesser,  as  men  do  oftentimes,  and  women  yet  more 
surely  in  their  headlong  and  blind  choice. 

He  heard;   and  a  great  shudder  shook  him. 

lie  had  condemned  himself  to  endless  and  unrequited 
martyrdom,  that  she  might  pass  to  the  fate  she  desired, 
and  never  have  aughl  wherewith  to  reproach  him;  and 
evrn  out  of  this  she  wove  a  I ;  1  - 1 1  that  scourged  him  with 
deeper  stripes  than  any  he  had  borne! 

"Wait,  wait!  or  you  will  kill  me  I"  hecried.  '"Stayed 
by  me  !'  Oh,  God  !  if  you  had  done  so  !  But  your  heart. 
was  disloyal,  and  lost  to  me;  could  1  hold  captive  your 
body?  You  see  now  a  worth  you  have  missed,  in  thai 
life  that  you  would  have  led  by  my  side  ;  but  then, — who 
could  make  you  believe?  And  you  forget — vou  forgel 
a  creature  of  your  sex  and  your  loveliness  could  not  have 
abode  with  me  without  a  chain  that  you  would  not  have 
taken,  unless  gold  had  gilded  the  fetters:  you  must  have 
been  my  mistress,  or  my  wife  !" 


500  TRICOTRIN, 

She  started  violently ;  and  the  blood  crimsoned  all  her 
face;  she  bad  spoken  in  the  impulse  of  the  old  love  and 
reverence  she  had  yielded  him  in  her  girlhood ;  she  had 
never  dreamed  of  any  other  life  with  him  than  that  of 
the  by-gone  familiar  communion  which  they  had  known 
in  this  lowly  place  when  she  had  been  a  child,  and  he 
had  been  all  the  world  to  her. 

In  this  hour  her  pride  had  been  dead,  her  rank  forgot- 
ten, her  self-love  abhorred ;  in  this  hour  conscience,  and 
memory,  and  the  veneration  she  had  borne  him,  had 
alone  reigned  with  her. 

Now,  his  indulgence  of  that  moment's  hot  and  un- 
checked utterance,  recalled  to  her  the  many  times  that 
she  had  wept  in  his  arms,  clung  to  his  embrace,  been 
kissed  by  his  lips,  in  that  long-perished  time;  in  this 
moment  it  seemed  to  her  that  the  tie  between  them  was 
nearer,  stronger,  more  indissoluble,  than  the  ties  betwixt 
father  and  daughter,  wife  and  husband,  master  and 
slave ! 

Even  while  these  memories  burned  her  with  an  ab- 
horred sense  of  debt  and  shame,  the  height  and  depth, 
the  might  and  beauty,  of  this  life-long  love  that  she  had 
flung  away,  smote  her  with  its  greatness  and  its  divinity 
as  it  had  never  done  in  earlier  years,  never  done  through 
all  the  self-absorption  of  her  life-.  It  appalled,  it  amazed, 
it  affrighted  her : — such  a  debt  as  this  could  never  be  paid  ; 
and,  while  it  remained  unpaid,  how  could  any  woman 
owing  it  be  free  ? 

He,  divining  all  her  thoughts,  with  that  knowledge  of 
her  mutable  nature  which  he  had  so  long  possessed,  hast- 
ened to  cover  from  her  sight  that  passion  which  for  one 
instant  had  been  near  its  betrayal  to  her.  She  was  his 
debtor ;  naught  could  cancel  such  a  debt ;  therefore  he 
forced  himself  to  calmness,  and  hastened  to  repair  what 
might  have  seemed  a  claim  laid  through  that  debt. 

"  You  are  of  the  world ;  you  know  its  tenets  now,"  he 
said,  tranquilly.  "  You  know,  therefore,  how  idle  it  is  to 
dream  you  could  have  remained  with  me  without  re- 
proach. Unless,  indeed,  your  whole  life  had  been  mine. 
But — you  remember? — I  asked  you  once  if  my  love  would 
suffice  to  you ;  and  your  answer  was,  that  you  craved 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         501 

greatness  also.     I  had  not  greatness;  how  could  I  con- 
tent yon  ?" 

"  Yes  !  When  I  answered  you  I  was  vain,  and  worth- 
less, and  full  of  avarice,  as  I  am  now!" 

The  words  were  muttered  low  in  her  throat ;  she  moved 
with  feverish  unrest  to  and  fro  the  little  chamber ;  she 
wondered,  with  that  curious  dreamy  wonder  that  comes 
on  us  when,  having  chosen  one  path,  we  marvel  whither 
the  other  would  have  led,  how  it  would  have  been  with 
her  if  she  had  loved  and  followed  this  redeemer  of  her 
life.  And  her  heart  told  her — knowing  its  own  passions 
and  its  own  weakness — that  she,  with  her  thirst  for 
power,  and  her  greed  for  homage,  and  her  worship  of 
eminence  and  of  magnificence,  would  have  only  dwelt 
with  him  in  the  unceasing  cruelty  of  discontent,  or  have 
left  him,  to  deal  him  the  fate  of  Bruno. 

And  she  was  very  base  in  her  own  sight ;  for  she  knew 
likewise  that,  for  this  very  cause,  she  had  ever  been 
utterly  beneath  this  great  life  that  she  had  elected  to  de- 
sert for  things,  compared  with  it,  so  mean,  and  vain,  and 
worthless. 

She  paused  once  and  looked  at  him,  with  all  the  old 
look  of  her  childhood  back  in  her  uplifted  eves. 

"Such  men  -as  you,"  she  murmured,  "need  nobler 
things  than  women  to  love  you  and  to  value  you  !  We 
are  beneath  you — we  know  nothing  of  greatness  such  as 
yours  I" 

lie  smiled  :  the  smile  of  such  infinite  sadness. 

"Rather  you  see  it  not,  unless  it  wear  the  purple,  and 
bear  the  orb,  of  visible  power.  But  1,  indeed,  claim  none  ; 
have  none;  unless  it  maybe  such  as  may  grow  out  of 

freedom." 

"You  have  the  highest — the  best — the  only  greatness!" 
And  in  that  moment  she  saw  1  his  tnit  h  t  hal  she  had  SO 
long  neglected  or  derided  ;  saw  that  the  liberty,  the  self- 
mastery,  the  simplicity,  the  courage,  and  the  Bupreme 
SCOm  for  the  insincerity,  the  artifice,  and  the  bondage  of 
the  world,  which  were  in  this   man's  life,  had  a  greatness 

thai  surpassed  all  other  the  earth  held,  though  a  great- 
ness unrecognized  and  unrewarded  of  men. 
•    lie  answered  her  nothing. 


562  TRICOTRIN, 

Though  she  spoke  thus,  saw  thus,  felt  thus,  he  knew 
well  that  she  would  make  again  the  choice  she  then  had 
made,  were  the  election  again  offered  her : — that  now,  as 
then,  could  the  choice  be  afresh  set  before  her,  would  she 
forsake  him,  and  go  from  him  to  the  pomps  of  the  world. 

While  she  owned  the  greatness  of  the  truths,  the  liber- 
ties, and  the  simplicities  whereon  his  life  was  founded, 
she  would  yet  shrink  from  holding  out  her  hands  to  him 
in  her  palace  as  her  friend,  from  bidding  her  compeers  and 
her  lovers  behold  all  that  she  owed  to  him  ! — and  there 
was  unuttered  scorn  in  him,  as  well  as  unutterable  sad- 
ness, as  he  looked  on  her  in  silence. 

"  It  grows  late,"  he  said  briefly,  at  length.  "I  must 
remind  you  once  more — do  you  desire  your  absence  dis- 
covered ?" 

She  started,  and  glanced  at  the  clock ;  with  whose 
hands  her  own  childish  ones  had  so  often  played  in  mis- 
chievous fancies  to  retard,  or  to  advance,  some  dreaded 
hour  of  study  or  some  desired  moment  of  playtime. 

"  It  is  late  indeed  !  I  shall  be  missed  : — he  has  theat- 
rical pieces  to-night  on  purpose  for  my  pleasure  ;  my 
absence  must  not  be  known.  How  quickly  can  I  re- 
turn ?" 

"  In  two  hours ;  scarcely  sooner.  You  will  do  best  to 
lose  no  time." 

"  I  must  go  there, — once  more.  Then  I  will  come," 
she  murmured.  "Stay!  tell  me, — there  is  no  fear  that 
peasant  child  who  is  with  her  can  suspect, — can  recognize 
me, — can  speak  to  others  ?" 

"No  fear.  That  girl  is  from  Lorraine — a  grand-niece 
of  grand'mere.  She  never  heard  of  you,  and  she  will  now 
return  east  to  her  own  people,  deeming  you  some  great 
princess  who  came  out  of  charity  to  see  an  old  peasant 
who  once  nursed  you." 

She  shuddered  a  little  as  she  heard. 

"But — but,  I  cannot  bear  to  think  that  this  place  may 
pass  to  strangers — that  all  these  things  of  hers  may  be 
scattered, — that  the  animals,  and  the  fowls,  and  the  swal- 
lows may  be  ill  treated  or  killed.  Can  you  not  purchase 
it  for  me  without  my  name  appearing,  and  place  some  one 
in  it  who  will  be  good  to  all  the  creatures?" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  f,fi3 

She  stroked  the  cat  as  she  spoke;  it  seemed  a  link  be- 
twixt her  and  the  dead. 

"  The  place — such  as  it  is — is  mine,"  he  made  answer. 
"You  need  have  no  fear;  care  shall  be  had  of  it." 

He  did  not  remind  her  that  to  rent  it,  and  fill  it  with' 
its  cottage  things,  and  keep  it  for  her  with  some  sort  of 
picturesque  grace  about  it,  he  had  sacrificed  much,  toiled 
hardly  oftentimes,  its  slight  costs  heavily  taxing  his  own 
means. 

She  felt  what  he  had  not  uttered,  and  moved  in  silence 
from  the  chamber. 

More  than  an  hour  had  passed  ere  she  returned  from 
her  last  look  upon  the  face  that  had  been  first  among  her 
earliest  memories  ;  her  eyelids  were  swollen,*and  her  lips 
white,  as  she  came  to  him. 

"I  am  ready,"  was  all  she  said. 

They  did  not  speak  as  they  left  the  cottage,  and  went 
down  through  the  scarlet  beans  and  the  wild-growing 
gourds  to  the  landing-place  in  the  garden,  and  drifted 
away  in  the  boat  down  the  river. 

Her  eyes  watched,  as  long  as  they  could  follow.it,  the 
little  light  burning  in  the  chamber  of  the  dead. 

The  proudest  and  most  ambitious  dreams  with  which 
she  bad  last  left  that  innocent  home  among  the  swallows 
had  attained  their  fruition: — but  remorse  and  repentance 
were  with  her. 

No  words  passed  between  them  as  the  boat  slowly 
labored  against  the  stream. 

When  I  hey  reached  the  place  of  the  ferry,  he  aided  her 
in  silence  to  land. 

"I  will  follow  you."  he  said  simply,  "near  enough  to 
be  at  hand  if  you  need  me." 

"  That  is  how  you  have  ever  followed  my  life  !" 
"  Well  !  the  time  may  yet  come  when  I  may  lie  wanted, 
wild  as  the  thoughl    seems  of  sueh  an  omnipoieii!    life  as 
yours.     Pass  onward — unless  you  would  have  your  bosl 
disquieted  by  your  absence." 

"  Would  he  care  it'  1  w  ere  dead  in  that  river !" 
The  murmur  was  hitter  ami  doubting,     li  betrayed  the 
one  victory  on  which  she  alone  was  uncertain,  the  one 


564  TRICOTRIN, 

desire  that  alone  was  ungranted  to  her,  the  one  douht  of 
her  own  power  that  alone  had  ever  humiliated  her. 

He  gave  a  short,  sharp  sigh.     It  had  told  him  all. 

"  You  still  desire  his  love  !" — the  words  were  almost 
savage  in  their  vehemence. 

She  was  silent.  She  could  have  bitten  her  tongue 
through,  that  ever  it  should  have  betrayed  her  thus. 

He  let  her  pass  on  ;  and  she  went  swiftly,  with  pas- 
sionate movement,  through  the  darkness  of  the  forest- 
lands. 

When  the  lights  which  illumined  the  terraces  glistened 
in  view,  he  gained  her  side  with  a  few  rapid  steps. 

"You  are  in  safety;  yonder  is  your  entrance.  The 
heart  of  your  childhood  has  awakened  in  you  to-night ; 
keep  it  waking,  or  its  next  sleep  will  be  death.  And — if, 
in  your  cruel  caprices,  you  set  your  soul  on  the  man  who 
lives  yonder, — remember  that  a  lie  is  accurst  in  his  sight, 
and  that  he  has  once  suffered  betrayal.  I  forbid  you  to 
play  with  his  peace,  or  to  trifle  with  his  honor." 

"You  forbid  me  !" — even  in  that  moment,  as  she  faced 
him  in  the  moonlight,  the  chief  emotion  in  her  was  her 
arrogant  pride,  that  defied  all  dictation  and  authoritv. 

"Yes— I." 

His  eyes  met  hers  with  a  look  in  them  that  compelled 
and  "awed  her,  as  a  master's  look  his  dog — a  look  which 
made  her  subject  to  him. 

Without  another  word  he  turned  away.  She  went 
onward,  confused,  breathless,  vaguely  afraid,  filled  with 
tumultuous  emotions. 

The  lesser  terror  of  her  own  discovery  died  away  in 
her.  It  was  eclipsed  by  a  greater — the  terror  lest  that 
vast  granite  mass  of  reckless  and  merciless  ingratitude 
that  she  had  piled  higher  and  higher  with  every  year  of 
her  life,  till  it  had  shut  out  the  holy  light  of  heaven, 
should  one  day  fall  and  crush  her. 

She  gained  the  terrace  with  swift  trembling  steps, 
passed  through  the  entrance-door  unobserved,  and  glided 
up  the  staircase  leading  to  her  apartments,  without  detec- 
tion. This  portion  of  the  building  was  forsaken ;  but 
through  its  casements  on  the  farther  side,  which  looked 
out  away  to  the  great  south  court  adjoining  the  stables, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         5fi5 

she  saw  the  forms  of  men  and  horses  moving  to  and  fro 
by  torchlight.  She  divined  the  truth,  that  they  had 
missed  and  were  about  to  search  for  her. 

There  were  none  of  her  own  attendants  in  her  cham- 
bers; she  was  thankful  for  an  absence  that  best  befriended 
her.  She  went  first  to  her  mirrors  to  see  how  her  face 
betrayed  her ;  all  her  color  was  gone,  and  her  eyelids 
were  "swollen  with  tears;  but  she  was  one  of  the  few 
women  in  whom  emotion  increases,  because  it  chastens 
and  softens,  beauty.  She  bathed  her  face  in  water; 
coiled  up  her  hair  which  had  fallen  ;  dropped  down  on 
to  a  couch  in  all  her  accustomed  grace  and  indolence  of 
repose,  and  rang  for  ber  women,  who,  entering  hur- 
riedly, could  ill  conceal  their  amaze  at  sight  of  her,  and 
recounted  breathlessly  that  her  host,  on  missing  her  from 
the  drawing-rooms,  had  found  that  no  one  had  seen  her 
for  several  hours,  had  then  become  alarmed  as  night  had 
fallen,  and  was  at  that  moment  about  to  start  in  quest  of 
her  with  his  horsemen. 

She  sent  him  a  message  of  graceful  thanks ;  adding 
that  she  had  wandered  somewhat  too  far  in  the  forest, 
and  been  belated.     That  was  all. 

Then,  with  haste  yet  especial  care,  she  arrayed  herself 
in  her  uttermost  brilliancy, — in  a  misty  cloud  of  black 
and  silver,  with  sapphires  gleaming  here  and  there,  ami 
a  knot  of  passion-flowers  in  her  bosom.  The  slight  ex- 
haustion and  loss  of  bloom  from  her  loveliness  only  added 
to  its  charm;  she  looked,  and  was  reassured  that  none 
could  trace  any  touch  of  sorrow  or  of  apprehension  on 
her. 

"He  feared  once  that  I  should  be  an  actress  like  the 
woman  Coriolis.  Ah,  heaven!  what  else  am  I  now?" 
she  thought,  as  she  turned  from  the  mirrors. 

When  she  entered  I  be  drawing-rooms,  none  of  the  many 
personages  then  gathered  at  Villiers  looked  deeper  than 
the  surface  of  her  words,  or  supposed  that  there  had  been 
any  other  cause  for  ber  absence  than  this  which  she  al- 
leged— that  -he  had  strolled  far  in  the  forest,  and  been 
benighted.  None — save  ber  host,  who,  as  he  welcomed 
her  safety,  and  apologized  for  bis  own  needless  anxieties, 

ts 


566  TRICOTRIN, 

regarded  her  with  a  look  she  could  ill  meet,  and  recalled 
that  letter  which  had  come  to  her  in  the  rose-gardens. 

Yet  the  terror  of  that  past  hour,  when  he  had  been 
haunted  by  the  thoughts  of  countless  accidents  that  might 
have  chanced  to  her,  had  told  him,  in  the  sharp  eloquence 
of  anguish,  that  his  life  were  valueless  without  this 
woman. 

Although  he  studied  her  keenly,  he  could  see  no  trace 
of  emotion,  no  sign  of  abstraction  in  her  through  the 
hours  at  the  dinner-table,  and  in  the  bijou  theater,  to 
which,  to  do  her  pleasure,  he  had  summoned  a  choice 
stage-troop  of  Paris.  She  was  slightly  more  languid, 
and  had  little  of  her  accustomed  wit — that  was  all. 

He  could  not  tell  that  all  she  saw,  throughout  that 
evening,  was  a  little  low  bed,  in  a  small  dark  chamber; 
and  an  old,  storm-beaten,  patient,  heroic  face,  with  the 
stillness  and  the  grandeur  of  death  set  on  it. 

He  longed  to  question  her,  but  the  delicacy  of  his  high 
breeding,  and  his  courtesy  as  a  host,  both  sealed  his  lips: 

"I  grow  a  madman,"  he  told  himself.  "Mystery! 
what  mystery  could  there  be  in  the  life  of  a  woman 
young,  proud,  eminent  as  she  is  ?  I  dream  ;  and  because 
the  strongest  love  of  my  youth  betrayed  me,  my  dreams 
are  only  suspicions  !" 

And  suspicion  was  a  foul  and  a  craven  thing  in  his 
sight — a  spy  that  could  have  no  lodgment  in  the  frank, 
just,  high  thoughts  of  a  gentleman. 

As  he  mused  thus,  he  was  standing,  after  the  dramatic 
representations,  alone  in  the  embrasure  of  a  picture  cab- 
inet, that  led  out  on  to  the  head  of  the  grand  staircase. 
He  had  drawn  the  curtain  back,  and  was  gazing  on  to 
the  moonlit  terrace  and  the  oak  forests  below,  without 
thinking  of  what  he  beheld.  He  started  as  he  heard  the 
sweep  of  a  woman's  robes  near  him,  and  saw  the  object 
of  his  thoughts  crossing  the  little  chamber.  She  paused, 
with  a  certain  hesitation.  She  had  been  ignorant  of  his 
presence  there  ;  she  was  leaving  the  reception-rooms  to 
seek  her  own  apartments.  She  was  worn  out  with  the 
self-command  she  had  attained,  and  both  fatigue  and  sad- 
ness were  visible  on  her  face  as  she  passed  through, 
deeming  herself  in  solitude. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WATF  AND  STRAY,         5G7 

On  a  sudden  impulse,  she  approached  him. 

'•  I  have  not  thanked  you,  I  fear,  for  your  concern  for 
my  safety  to-night,"  Bhe  said,  hurriedly.  "I  must  tell 
you  that  the  reasons  I  gave  for  my  absence  were  only 
partially  true.  The  fall  of  evening  overtook  me,  indeed, 
in  your  forests,  but  it  was  no  accident  by  which  I  was 
delayed." 

His  eyes  lightened  with  surprised  pleasure  : 

"  Any  confidence  you  may  place  in  me  will  be  cherished 
and  sacred,  you  are  sure.  But, — do  not  deem  yourself 
called  on  to  give  it  simply  because  I  enjoy  the  privilege 
of  being  your  host." 

For  the  moment,  a  desire  came  over  her  to  tell  him  the 
whole  unwarped  and  unvarnished  truth.  But  the  desire 
was  not  strong  enough  to  conquer  the  false  pride  within 
her,  and  the  terror  she  felt  of  being  lowered  and  humili- 
ated in  his  sight. 

She  hastened  with  all  her  most  graceful  arts  of  speech 
to  thank  him,  to  assure  him  that  this  was  but  a  slight 
matter: — she  did  not  wish  it  spoken  of,  lest  she  should  be 
wearied  with  inquiries.  She  had  heard  in  tin-  latter  half 
of  the  day  that  a  noble  old  woman — a  peasant  who  had 
nursed  her  in  her  infancy — was  lying  in  the  extremities 
of  death  in  a  cottage  by  the  l'ivcr-side,  and  was  praying 
earnestly  and  piteouslyto  see  her  once  again.  She  could 
not  refuse  such  a  request;  she  had  gone  thither  by  her- 
self, preferring  not  to  make  her  errand  known.  She  had 
been  unaware  that  her  absence  would  be  of  such  duration. 

So  the  delicate  polished  semi-falsehoods  ran,  with  soft 
successful  fluency.  But  while  she  uttered  them,  Bhe  was 
degraded  in  her  own  eyes.  She  told  him  no  lie,  indeed  : 
yet  none  the  less  did  she  deceive  him. 

Keen  of  vision  though  he  was.  and  difficulf  to  content 
in  aught  that  savored  of  evasion,  or  challenged  the 
acuteness  of  his  judgment,  ho  was  thrown  oil'  his  guard 
by  the  joy  he  felt  at  finding  so  much  pity  in  the  woman 
\\  bom  he  hail  dreaded  as  an  unscrupulous,  heartless,  and 
self-absorbed  coquette.  It  seemed  nothing  strange  to  him 
thai  so  Budden  memory  and  compassion  had  moved  her, 
and  senl  her  forth  on  an  anweighed  impulse;  for  he  had 
seen  the  sympathy  and  the  agitation  with  which  she  had 


568  TR.ICOTRIN, 

watched  the  perils  of  human  life  in  the  stone-yard.  And 
he  accepted,  unanalyzed  and  unquestioned,  a  narrative 
which  at  another  hour,  and  from  other  lips,  he  would  have 
deemed  strange,  involved,  and  insufficient. 

"  I  honor  you  for  your  noble  charity  and  for  your  gen- 
tleness of  heart,"  he  murmured.  "If  you  have  that 
divine  pity  in  you,  why  will  you  stifle  it  so  often,  and " 

"  Hush,  hush !"  she  interrupted  him,  passionately. 
"  Do  not  you  praise  me  !  '  Noble  charity' — mine  1  If 
you  only  knew  the  selfishness,  the  cruelty,  the  baseness 
of  my  life  !  When  I  have  a  touch  of  holier  feeling,  of 
higher  thought  in  me,  it  comes  too  late,  as  it  came  too 
late  to-night !" 

"Too  late?" 

"  Yes,  she  was  dead.  My  words  fell  on  ears  forever 
deaf  to  the  voices  of  earth.  I  reproach  myself  more  than 
I  could  ever  tell  you  !" 

"  How  was  it  fault  of  yours  ?  You  knew  that  this  old 
creature  lived  on  this  country  side  ?" 

"  Yes,  I  knew;  and  I  had  promised  so  often — through 
so  many  years — to  go  and  let  her  look  upon  my  face  once 
more,  and  yet  I  never  went.  I  let  summer  and  winter 
glide  away  again,  and  again,  and  again ;  and  I  never  re- 
membered that  time  brings  death  to  the  old.  I  had  leisure 
for  all  the  pomps,  and  the  pleasures,  and  the  frivolities, 
and  the  caprices  of  my  life ;  but  I  never  had  leisure  for 
this  one  simple  duty.  And  when  I  reached  her  side,  she 
was  dead  I" 

The  tears  gushed  into  her  eyes  afresh ;  her  lips  quivered. 
This  was  real,  and  sincere,  and  unstudied.  On  this  she 
could  utter  the  truth  to  him. 

His  thoughts  were  not  with  the  obscure  lost  life  of 
which  she  spoke,  but  with  this  exquisite,  wayward, 
changeful,  imperious,  incomprehensible  woman,  whose 
moods  varied  like  the  sun  and  shade  of  a  spring  day,  and 
whose  tenderness  and  remorse  were  as  passionate  as  her 
vanity  and  her  egotism  were  cold.  Fear  and  doubt,  sus- 
picion and  wisdom,  all  faded  away  in  him  as  though  they 
had  never  been ;  he  only  remembered  that  she  beguiled 
him  as  no  temptress  had  done  since  the  days  of  his  youth. 

"If  you  have  so  much  pity  for  the  dead,  who  cherished 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         509 

you  in  your  infancy,  have  you  no  pity  for  the  living,  who 
worship  you  in  your  womanhood  ?"  he  said,  suddenly ; 
with  a  sound  in  his  voice  that  she  had  never  heard,  a  look 
on  his  face  that  she  had  never  seen,  as  the  white  moon- 
light fell  about  them  where  they  stood  by  the  opened 
casement. 

"  It  is  the  common  reproach  against  me  that  I  have  had 
too  little,"  she  murmured,  in  answer. 

"A  reproach  you  deserve  only  too  well !  But — but — 
will  you  find  mercy  at  last  ?  Passion  has  no  place  on 
my  lips.  It  betrayed  me  in  my  youth ;  it  has  no  fitness 
in  my  present  years.  And  yet,  you  have  won  my  secret 
from  me  to-night;  you  must  hear  what  I  thought  never 
to  tell ;  you  must  know — that  I  am  mad  enough  to  love 
you !" 

He  spoke,  almost  without  hope.  He  spoke  to  a  co- 
quette who  had  never  spared,  to  a  sovereign  who  had 
never  stooped,  to  a  woman  who  had  never  pitied.  Yet, 
as  she  listened,  her  face  changed  with  a  marvelous  light, 
and  flush,  and  tenderness  thai  no  eyes  had  ever  beheld  on 
it.  She  was  silent,  but  she  raised  her  head,  and  turned, 
and  looked  at  him: — one  look  only,  still,  by  it  he  was 
answered. 

And  as  her  proud  head  dropped  down  upon  his  breast, 
and  his  lips  sought  hers  to  find  there  all  the  lost  joys  of 
his  dead  youth,  he  felt  her  whole  frame  thrill  in  his  em- 
brace,-  and  heard  her  broken  words: 

"I  am  not  worthy  of  you!  I  am  not  worthy  1" 


CHAPTER   LXII. 


"Imperil  hi-  peace — trifle  with  his  honor.    Ah.  heaven! 
There  will  be  no  Deed  to  forbid  me  that  I"  she  thought,  in 

the  solitude  of  her  chamber  an  hour  later,  while  the  touch 
of  his  firsl  kisses  seemed  still  to  linger  on  her  lip-,  and 
the  fervor  of  passion  aeemed  .-till  to  gaze  on  her  from  tin; 
eyes  which  she  had  thought  would  never  soften  in  their 


regard. 


48* 


570  TRICOTRIN, 

A  joy  had  come  to  her,  beside  which  all  the  joys  of 
her  victorious  years  looked  faint  of  hue  and  poor  of  treas- 
ure. From  its  long  opium-sleep  of  deep-drugged  vanity 
her  soul  had  stirred  at  last;  and  the  love  which  she  had 
so  long  derided  and  disdained,  had  awakened  in  her  for 
the  one  who  alone,  amid  throngs  of  crowding  flatterers, 
had  neglected,  condemned,  and  distrusted  her. 

She  loved  him — with  a  vivid  force,  a  reverent  humility, 
an  impassioned  tenderness,  that  a  year  earlier  she  would 
have  mocked  at  as  lowest  weakness,  wildest  madness. 
She  loved  him — with  a  love  that  set  its  heel  upon  her 
pride,  and  bent  her  strength  beneath  it.  She  loved  him — 
and  this  one  missing  jewel  from  her  triple  diadem  of 
youth,  and  power,  and  loveliness,  was  found  and  added  to 
her  crown. 

Love  had  had  cruel  usage  at  her  hands.  It  had  watched 
over  her  from  the  hour  when  her  young  eyes  had  opened 
at  the  music  of  the  Straduarius,  to  gaze  at  the  purple  but- 
terflies dancing  in  the  sun ;  it  had  been  lavish  of  every 
richest  thing  to  her,  and  had  waited  upon  her  with  a  slave's 
submission ;  its  chaplets  were  wound  on  her  brows,  its 
blossoms  strewed  her  path,  its  wings  had  lifted  her  up 
to  loftiest  heights,  and  its  smile  had  ever  shed  sunlight 
upon  her.  But  she,  in  answer,  had  only  cast  to  it  some 
gay  scorn,  some  light  irony,  some  child's  cruelty,  some 
woman's  contempt. 

Yet  even  now  it  was  not  weary;  it  was  not  driven 
away;  it  brought  to  her  the  latest  and  the  holiest  of  all 
its  countless  gifts,  it  nestled  in  her  bosom  like  a  dove  that 
bears  glad  tidings,  it  changed  even  the  pangs  of  remorse 
into  the  throbs  of  joy.  Love  had  been  forsaken  by  her  in 
a  thousand  careless  seasons,  yet  it  remained  with  her,  and 
was  faithful  ever. 

Even  from  this  death-hour,  when  the  sin  of  her  ingrati- 
tude had  dealt  its  deadliest  stroke,  there  had  sprung, 
through  Love,  the  fullest  sweetness  that  her  life  had 
known  :  and  a  vague  fear  came  on  her  of  this  giver  so 
prodigal,  of  this  slave  so  patient,  of  this  friend  so  con- 
stant and  unwearied. 

"  Oh  God  1"  she  murmured  in  her  solitude.  "  I  have 
been  so  base,  so  faithless,  so  guilty  to  all  love.     If  his, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         511 

the  only  love  I  treasure,  should  take  its  vengeance  and 
forsake  me !" 

She  had  cast  one  great  life  away  from  her  as  idly  as  a 
child  casts  balls  of  cowslips  on  the  air,  as  selfishly  as  a 
falconer  casts  hawks  down  a  south  wind,  as  cruelly  as  a 
murderer  casts  dead  limbs  upon  the  sea:  was  it  just  that 
another  should  become  hers  also  ? 

Was  no  retribution  near  ?  Its  terror  seemed  to  touch 
her,  and  daunt  her  strength,  and  wither  her  pride,  and 
freeze  her  new-born  joy  with  its  breath  of  ice,  where  she 
stood  in  her  loneliness,  and  gazed  at  that  beauty  of  her 
face  and  form  which  had  so  late  been  to  her  all  she  heeded 
upon  earth,  yet  which  now  would  have  grown  worthless 
and  without  radiance  in  her  sight,  unless  fair  in  his  eyes, 
and  given  to  his  arms. 

For  the  voice  of  conscience  spoke  in  her,  and  ques- 
tioned ceaselessly — 

"Will  you  go  to  his  heart  with  a  shame  concealed? 
Will  you  lift  your  lips  for  his  kiss,  with  a  lie  hovering 
on  them?  Will  you  answer  his  faith  with  your  false- 
hood r 

A  day  since,  an  hour  since,  she  had  said  to  herself  that 
he  should  never  know;  that  though  she  should  heap  lie 
on  lie  upon  her  head,  the  truth  should  be  concealed 
from  him  and  from  the  world.  An  hour  ago  her  pride 
had  been  holier  to  her,  her  eminence  dearer  to  her  than 
any  other  thing. 

But  with  the  touch  of  his  lips,  with  the  possession  of 
his  love,  all  that  was  still  noble  in  her  nature  had  sprung 
to  life  once  more.  Now  that  she  knew  his  peace,  and 
honor,  and  future  all  were  hers,  she  knew  that  she  might 
with  less  baseness  strike  a  knife  into  his  heart  than  be 
his  wife  with  one  treachery  between  them. 

She  knew  that  to  take  his  love,  leaving  him  in  blind- 
ness, was  treacherous  as  any  assassin's  thrust,  she 
knew  thai  by  reason  of  that  very  guilt  which  had  de- 
ceived him  in  his  youth,  to  deceive  him  afresh  was  the 
foulest  cowardice  that  ever  stained  a  woman's  life. 
Better,  she   knew,  be  forever    severed    from  him,  than 

glide  into  his  life  through  the  channels  of  falseh 1.  than 

live  in  union  with  him  with  one  act  in  her  past  untold, 


572  TRIC0TR1N, 

than  sleep  in  his  bosom  with  a  single  secret  to  haunt  the 
hours  of  the  night.  Better  to  summon  all  the  world 
about  her,  and  fling  her  story  to  the  winds,  and  stand 
before  him,  without  pride,  without  power,  without  any 
single  thing  of  greatness  or  of  dignity  or  of  possession 
left,  but  able  to  look  into  his  eyes  without  one  fear  of 
what  they  should  there  read ;  able  to  say  to  him  in  hon- 
esty and  strength — "there  is  no  lie  on  the  lips  that  you 
kiss :  there  is  no  secret  in  the  life  that  you  make  one  with 
your  own." 

Her  heart  and  her  conscience  had  been  startled  from 
their  long  sleep  that  night.  She  was  awakened  from  the 
deep  dreams  of  that  supreme  selfishness  which  had 
drugged  her  like  an  opiate ;  the  courage,  the  truthful- 
ness, the  spirit  of  her  childhood  were  once  more  roused. 

"  What  is  it  I  do !"  she  thought  in  horror.  "  Win 
love,  and  trust,  and  honor,  on  a  lie  !" 

She  knew  that  it  was  possible, — nay,  likely, — that, 
knowing  all,  he  would  put  her  from  his  life  forever. 
She  knew  the  pride  of  birth  that  was  in  him  ;  the  patri- 
cian contempt  that  shone  forth  so  often  in  his  slightest 
words  ;  the  intense  dread  of  any  shadow  of  dishonor  that 
the  early  infidelity  of  his  wife  had  left  perpetually  on 
him.  She  knew  that  with  all  the  passion  he  bore  her, 
he  loved  his  honor,  and  the  dignity  and  purity  of  his 
name,  far  more.  She  knew  that  if  she  told  him  the  bare 
bitter  truth,  it  was  well-nigh  a  surety  that  she  would 
never  look  upon  his  face  again.  And  this — not  alone 
from  the  mere  impulses  of  pride,  but  from  the  doubt  in 
his  soul  which  would  say — "faithless  in  her  childhood, 
and  a  falsehood  to  the  wTorld,  what  warrant  have  I  that 
she  will  be  truer  and  more  loyal  to  me  ?" 

And  yet  all  that  ever  had  been  nobler  in  her  was 
aroused  and  in  tumult  that  night.  The  dead  face  of  the 
woman  whom  she  had  deserted  ;  the  burning  rebukes  of 
the  man  she  had  abandoned,  had  withered  up  the  vani- 
ties and  arrogancies  of  her  life  ;  and  beneath  them  the 
living  heart  beat  still — beat  faster  and  more  loudly  be- 
cause it  throbbed  in  pain. 

She  gazed  at  her  own  loveliness  with  the  old  rapt  wor- 
ship of  it  still  in  her  regard. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         573 

"I  shall  give  him  all  this!"  she  thought,  while  a  hot 
flush  stole  over  her  face.     "  It  is  enough  I" 

But  in  her  conscience  she  knew  that  this  beauty  would 
be  the  most  cruel,  the  most  fatal  gift  that  ever  woman's 
beauty  was  to  man,  unless  with  it  she  gave  also — truth. 

There  stole  on  her  the  memory  of  a  day, — long,  very 
long,  ago, — when  one,  against  whom  her  past  had  been 
an  endless  sin,  had  murmured  to  her  in  the  words  of  his 
farewell : — "  Let  my  memory  stand  between  thee  and  thy 
temptations,  so  shall  I  have  no  gift  to  give  thee." 

And  she  fell  on  her  knees,  and  wept  in  an  agony  of 
grief,  and  prayed  in  passionate,  inarticulate,  wild  prayer, 
"  Oh,  God,  make  me  for  one  hour  worthy  of  the  mighty 
love  that  I  forsook  !" 

When  she  arose,  her  face  had  a  weary,  hopeless,  rigid 
look,  as  of  one  who  has  striven  and  conquered,  indeed, 
but  with  such  strife  and  such  conquest  as  leave  the  vic- 
tor broken,  exhausted,  well-nigh  slain. 

"  He  shall  know  all,"  she  muttered  through  her  color- 
less lips.  She  turned,  and  moved  through  the  lone- 
liness of  her  chambers,  and  passed  out  in  the  deserted 
corridor. 

The  great  building  was  silent;  she  knew  that  he  was 
alone  in  his  library,  since,  when  they  had  parted,  he  had 
spoken  of  letters  of  import  that  would  occupy  him  until 
daybreak.  She  went  to  seek  him  that  night,  that  hour, 
dreading  her  own  weakness  of  shame  and  of  self-pity, 
dreading  lest  her  strength  should  fail,  and  this  martyrdom 
pass  from  her. 

The  two  white  lines  of  marble  stairs  ran  parallel  with 
each  other,  severed  by  the  vastness  of  the  hall  below. 
All  the  lights  still  burned  and  "littered  on  them.  As  she 
stood  on  the  head  of  one,  up  the  ascent  of  the  other  there 
came  a  swift,  silent  step,  like  the  light  tread  of  a  grey- 
hound. 

She  glanced  across, — the  stranger  glanced  at  her.  It 
was  but  one  instanl  thai  their  eyes  met.  He  passed  on- 
ward, with  his  eyelids  lowered,  and  his  swift  step  un- 
changed. She  stood  as  though  rooted  to  the  ground,  her 
whole  frame  shivering  like  that  of  an  antelope  which 
sees  the  panther  alar  off. 


574  TRICOTRIN, 

"Chanrellon!  Are  you  coming?"  cried  a  laughing 
voice  from  above. 

"I  am  coming!"  answered  the  stranger,  as  a  young 
man  answers  a  young  comrade. 

She  turned  and  crept  back  into  her  chamber  like  a 
creature  numb  with  cold,  and  cast  herself  across  her 
couch,  and  lay  there  in  a  stupor. 

What  avail  to  take  confidence  to  him  now  ! 

Truth  now  could  look  but  Fear. 

When  her  women,  awhile  later,  entered  her  apartments, 
they  found  her  cold  and  stupefied,  the  passion-flowers 
crushed  upon  her  hair,  her  bosom  cut  with  the  sapphires' 
sharp  facets ;  and  when  consciousness  revived  in  her 
under  their  terrified  efforts,  they  heard  her  murmur — 

"My  sin  has  come  home  to  me  1     It  is  just,  it  is  just !" 


CHAPTER  LXIII. 


Midway  between  the  park  and  the  dairies  there  was  a 
cluster  of  acacias,  now  in  blossom,  and  luxuriant  as  they 
only  are  south  of  the  Loire.  They  parted  two  water- 
threaded  meadows,  and  formed  a  thicket  of  foliage  and 
blossom. 

Under  their  boughs  stood  Annette  Veuillot,  with  one 
hand  on  her  hip,  and  the  other  balancing  on  her  head  the 
milk-pail  that  served  to  disguise  her  errand.  Beside  her 
stood  the  man  whose  feminine  and  languid  grace  had 
been  so  fair  in  her  eyes,  because  of  its  utter  unlikeness  to 
her  own  coarse,  robust,  weather-beaten  strength  and  ugli- 
ness. Her  mouth  laughed  wide,  her  tawny  skin  was 
flushed  with  eagerness,  her  breast  heaved  against  her 
leathern  bodice. 

"  It  was  not  madness  in  me,  then  !"  she  muttered  ex- 
ultantly.    "  Why  were  you  so  loth  to  believe  ?" 

"  I  was  not  loth!"  answered  her  companion,  unable, 
through  the  bond  between  them,  to  resent  her  familiarity. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         575 

"  I  was  incredulous,  indeed.  The  Duchess  de  Lira ! — I 
have  heard  through  so  many  seasons  of  her  beauty,  her 
fame,  her  extravagance.  I  could  not  credit  that  a  creat- 
ure so  proud  and  powerful  could  be " 

"  That  bohemian's  brat !"  said  the  woman,  with  fero- 
cious glee.  "  But  she  is,  she  is,  I  will  wager  ;  whatever 
millions  of  lies  they  may  have  told  to  screen  her.  You 
saw  her  well,  my  lord  ?" 

"  Twice.  Once, — as  long  as  I  chose  to  look, — from  the 
musicians'  gallery,  before  any  knew  of  my  arrival ;  and 
again  on  the  staircase.  I  do  not  think  there  is  a  doubt, 
though — Heaven  1 — who  could  have  believed  in  such  a 
change  !" 

"  Fine  feathers  make  fine  birds !  I  knew  her  at  a 
glance.  Women  never  forget.  Would  you  have  known 
her,  my  lord,  if  I  had  not  put  this  thing  in  your 
thoughts?" 

"  No ;  I  doubt  if  I  should.  I  should  have  been  per- 
plexed with  some  resemblance,  but  no  more.  The  child 
was  lovely,  but  the  woman  is  magnificent  as  a  goddess!" 

There  was  a  fervid  longing  in  his  tune  that  caught  her 
ear,  that  told  her  with  what  quickness  the  died-out  fancy 
for  the  child  would  revive  in  passion  for  the  woman. 

"  Will  she  wed  with  your  father  V  she  asked,  savagely. 

He  broke  a  cluster  of  blossoms  off  the  acacia  with  a 
gesture  of  impatience. 

"  He  says  so.  I  had  speech  with  him  late  last  night, 
concerning  a  question  of  some  property,  which  he  sup- 
poses is  the  object  of  my  visit.  I  saw  a  change  in  him — 
there  is  a  look  in  his  eyes  which  is  new  there.  I  made 
allusion  to  his  marriage  as  a  rumor  that  I  had  heard.  I 
asked  if  it  were  a  true  one.  He  answered,  very  briefly, 
that  it  was.  No  more  words  passed  between  us.  I  let 
him  see  that  J  was  surprised  and  ill  pleased,  that  was  all. 
And  10  this  In-  was  indifferent,  Now,  you  have  n<>  proof 
to  give  me  that  this  persuasion  of  yours  is  a  certainty?" 

"None,"  she  said,  sullenly.  "Bui  if  yon  are  not  an- 
swered, name  old  Virelois  to  her  as  1  did;  you  will  see 
then!" 

'■That  is  not  what  I  mean.  Myself,  I  have  no  doubt. 
But  on  anything  less  than  some  actual  doubt,  1  cannot 


576  TRICOTRIN, 

say  to  the  Duchess  de  Lira,  to  the  betrothed  wife  of  Est- 
mere,  'You  are  a  foundling  and  a  bastard;  you  are  an 
imposture  on  the  world  you  rule  ;  you  are  the  little  fool 
that  once  took  my  jewels  and  toys,  and  was  tempted,  for 
my  sake,  to  the  house  of  Coriolis.'  I  cannot  say  this  to 
her  on  mere  conjecture,  mere  supposition?" 

She  understood,  and  stood  thinking  awhile  ;  her  strong 
teeth  gnawing  her  nether  lip.  Then  suddenly  a  dull, 
cruel  gleam  shot  over  her  face. 

"See  here;  there  is  one  of  her  men  who  came  down  to 
Villiers  with  her,  who  has  got  into  love  with  little  Laure 
at  my  dairy.  He  is  always  there ;  after  no  good,  but  I  let 
him  come ;  I  have  heard  a  great  deal  of  her  so.  And  he 
told  me  one  thing.  There  is  a  steward  very  bitter  against 
her  because  she  dismissed  him,  an  old  man  who  lives  now 
with  his  son-in  law,  Lobesq,  the  jeweler,  in  Paris.  He 
might  tell  you  somewhat  ?  It  is  possible,  my  lord.  I 
know  Laure's  lover  said  once  that  he  believed  the  old 
man  would  hurt  his  mistress  if  he  could,  though  he  did 
not  see  what  means  he  ever  would  be  able  to  find." 

He  heard  her  thoughtfully. 

"  Lobesq  ?  I  have  had  dealings  with  him.  I  can  learn 
this  with  ease.  You  are  a  wise  woman,  Veuillot.  You 
see — since  the  honor  of  my  house  will  be  involved  in 
both  the  past  and  the  future  of  this  dainty  duchess  whom 
my  father  loves — it  is  needful,  as  it  would  not  otherwise 
be,  that  I  should  reach  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  of  her 
history." 

She  laughed  grimly,  with  a  sardonic  appreciation  of 
the  sophistry  in  which  he  veiled  his  own  vengeance  in 
solicitude  for  the  dignity  of  his  race. 

"No  doubt,  my  lord,"  she  said,  curtly.  "As  for  me — I 
am  a  woman — I  want  only  to  taste  a  drop  of  revenge  for 
the  pretty  fashion  in  which  that  bastard  called  us  once 
a  set  of  senseless  peasants !  You  great  aristocrats  are 
careful  of  honor,  of  course  ;  a  little  vengeance  does  for 
us !     And  what  is  it  you  will  do  now  ?" 

"I  will  go  to  Paris.  I  must  leave  my  regrets  and 
apologies  to  the  fair  duchess  for  quitting  Villiers  so  hastily 
ere  she  has  risen,  and  without  presentation  to  her." 

She  smiled  at  the  smile  on  his  lips. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         577 

"When  she  is  your  father's  wife  you  will  see  her  often- 
times enough — you  will  be  so  welcome,  my  lord!" 

Low,  coarse,  debased  though  her  intelligence  was,  she 
had  the  shrewdness  which  took  her  straight  to  the  means 
by  which  she  would  most  surely  awaken  the  worst  in- 
stincts in  this  nature,  which  had  long  been  her  study. 

"She  will  never  be  his  wife,"  he  made  answer,  with  a 
sound  in  his  voice  that  caused  her  fierce  heart  to  leap 
with  joy. 

Then  he  slipped  a  roll  of  gold  pieces  into  her  palm  and 
went  his  ways  through  the  acacia-thicket.  She  looked 
after  him  with  a  hard,  strange  look  in  her  eyes  as  she 
thrust  the  gold  into  her  bosom.  In  her  own  brute-fashion 
she  loved  this  delicate,  indolent,  womanish  aristocrat, 
though  she  loved  his  gold  still  more  ;  and  her  heart  beat 
with  great  dull  throbs  against  the  leather  of  her  bodice. 
A  sudden  fear  touched  her. 

"  Had  I  better  have  left  her  alone  ?"  she  muttered. 
"He  will  only  love  her  again;  and — who  can  tell? — he 
will  have  her  secret,  he  may  only  use  it  to  sever  her  from 
his  father,  he  may  wed  with  her  himself, — who  can  tell  ?" 

And  she  strode  out  from  the  acacia  shadows,  breaking 
their  blossoms  down  with  the  swing  of  her  great  arm,  and 
went  across  the  meadows  and  through  the  lowing  cattle 
with  the  glow  of  triumph  faded,  and  the  cloud  of  hatred 
settled  on  her  face. 

"Anyway,  I  have  the  gold,"  she  thought,  thrusting 
her  hand  into  her  bosom. 

She  did  not  notice,  in  a  little  shallow  runlet  of  water 
thai  pierced  the  grass  by  the  acacias,  a  child  who  was 
gathering  water-cresses,  and  who  hid  himself  among  the 
reeds  and  bracken  as  she  passed. 

"Mother,  I  did  evil  to-day,"  said  a  lad  of  twelve,  with 
soft,  shy.  brown  eyes,  and  a  tender,  awed  face,  standing 
bi  3ide  Ninette,  who  was  busied  counting  the  young  apri- 
cots on  her  garden-wall. 

She  turned  and  looked  crently  on  her  sou. 

"Nay.  thy  crimes  cannot  be  \oi\  dark,  my  Victor. 
Wha1  is  this  thing?" 

"  1  did  a  shameful  thing,  mother.     I  was  a  spy  I" 

"A  spy!" — she  echoed  the  word  in  horror,  thinking  in 

49 


578  TRICOTRIN, 

an  instant  of  the  chevaliers  of  the  poniard,  of  whom  her 
grandsire  had  told  her  in  her  infancy. 

"Yes,"  murmured  the  lad,  "I  did  not  mean  it,  I  had 
no  thought ;  but  I  could  not  help  listening.  I  heard  with- 
out hearing, — you  know  ? — and  then  I  stayed  and  heard 
more,  because  I  wished.  It  was  very  shameful,  I  know. 
But  what  they  said  seemed  so  strange." 

"What  who  said?" 

"Annette  Veuillot  and  the  young  lord." 

His  mother's  face  darkened. 

"  The  young  lord  ?  Is  he  come  back  ?  It  was  his  car- 
riage, then,  that  came  through  so  late ;  your  father  had 
to  get  up  for  it.  Veuillot — she  was  never  a  good  woman. 
But  what  can  she  have  to  do  with  dainty  aristocrats  like 
Chanrellon  ?" 

"  I  do  not  know,  rightly.  But  I  can  tell  you  every 
word  I  heard,  mother." 

Ninette  hesitated — spurred  by  intense  inquisitive  desire, 
withheld  by  a  sturdy  sense  of  honor. 

"It  seems  wrong  for  me  to  listen,"  she  said,  at  length. 
"  Yet  children  should  keep  nothing  from  their  mothers. 
Well,  tell  me,  then  ;  I  can  tell  Tricotrin  afterward.  He 
always  knows  what  is  best." 

"  It  was  just  this,"  pursued  the  boy,  in  a  rapid  whis- 
per. "  You  know  the  little  brook  that  runs  all  through 
the  dairy  meadows  ?  I  was  getting  water-cresses  in  it 
at  sunrise  this  morning.  You  know  that  great  cluster  of 
acacia-trees  just  behind  the  dairy-houses  ?  They  are  so 
thick  with  bloom  now,  they  would  hide  a  hundred  men. 
Well — as  I  was  stooping  in  the  brook  after  the  cress,  I 
heard  Veuillot's  voice.  I  crept  nearer, — the  rushes  and 
the  burdock  grew  so  thick  there  that  they  hid  me, — and 
I  saw  her,  and  my  lord  Chanrellon  also.  They  were 
talking,  and  Veuillot  had  got  her  pail  on  her  head.  She 
is  so  ugly,  mother,  I  wonder  he  does  not  talk  instead  to 
Laure  ?     Laure  is  so  pretty " 

"But  what  were  they  saying?"  asked  Ninette,  impa- 
tiently, taking  a  slug  from  the  wall. 

"  Well — all  this,"  answered  her  son  ;  and  he  told  what 
he  had  overheard,  confusedly  enough,  but  giving  it  all 
the  weight  and  emphasis  he  could  in  his  wonder. 


THE  ST6RY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         5*79 

"  And  then  he  turned  away,"  ended  Victor,  at  the  close 
of  his  long  recital.  "And  she  went  too, — passing  me 
quite  close ;  and  I  heard  her  mutter,  '  Anyway,  I  have 
the  gold.'  But  is  it  not  strange  ?  What  could  it  mean? 
Who  is  it  they  can  think  that  splendid  duchess  is  ?  " 

"I  do  not  know,"  murmured  his  mother,  while  her 
ruddy  face  turned  pale.  She  did  not  know,  but  she 
guessed. 

"  He  never  said  the  child  was  dead,"  she  thought  to 
herself  as  she  stripped  a  leaf  off,  so  that  a  young  apricot 
might  get  "gilded,"  as  the  people  call  it. 

Then  she  turned  and  laid  her  hand  on  her  son's  forehead. 

"  Victor — promise  me  to  speak  of  this  to  no  living 
soul ;  not  even  to  your  sisters." 

"  I  promise,  mother." 

"  Right,"  she  said,  simply.  "  I  fear  there  is  wickedness 
afoot  That  Veuillot  was  never  a  good  woman.  In  the 
evening  }^ou  get  me  the  mule  saddled,  and  I  will  go  see 
Tricotrin." 

But  when  in  the  evening  she  rode  the  mule  down  into 
the  little  hollow,  where  the  sign  of  the  Silver  Stag  swung 
above  its  hollyhocks  and  its  fruit-trees,  the  keeper  of  the 
tavern  lamented,  with  many  regretful  phrases,  that  his 
beloved  guest  was  gone. 

"  Where  is  he  gone  f"  asked  Ninette,  anxiously. 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Ah  !  who  ever  knows  where  Tricotrin  is  gone,  or  is 
going?  lie  took  his  knapsack,  and  when  he  takes  his 
knapsack  he  commonly  goes  for  good.  Besides,  you 
know,"'  he  pursued,  sinking  his  voice  to  a  low  whisper, 
and  glancing  around  as  though  his  straight,  tall  hollyhocks 
were  officers  of  the  law,  "you  know, — they  say, — the 
students  are  up  again  in  Paris;  and  when  there  is  any- 
thing of  that  sort,  Tricotrin  is  sure  to  be  there  ready 
for  it." 

Ninette  turned  the  head  of  her  mule  sadly  homeward, 
thinking  nothing  of  the  students  and  their  riots,  but 
thinking  much  of  her  toiled  purpose.  In  her  own  heart 
she  was  certain  of  what  the  drifl  of  the  talk  thai  her  boy 
had  overheard  musl  have  been.  She  bad  nol  forgotten 
the  days  when  the  Prince  Faineant  had  taken  his  golden 


580  TRICOTRIN, 

gifts  under  the  beechen-tree, — aDd  she  felt  that  when  the 
Waif  of  the  Loire  had  died  to  the  peasantry,  she  had 
been  translated  to  that  marvelous  sphere  whereof  they 
had  only  far-off  glimpses,  and  vague,  intangible,  hazy 
conceptions. 

"  Tricotrin  should  have  known,"  she  said  to  herself 
over  and  over  again  as  the  mule  paced  slowly  homeward, 
nodding  his  lazy  head,  and  shaking  his  belled  bridle,  and 
stopping  to  graze  at  his  pleasure  on  the  wayside  grasses. 

Once  she  thought  of  going  straight  up  to  the  great 
house,  and  begging  audience  of  the  one  whom  that  wicked- 
ness of  the  woman  Veuillot's  menaced,  and  telling  all  to 
her  with  frankness  and  without  fear.  But  she  did  not 
dare. 

This  duchess  was  so  great  a  personage  ;  she  had  no 
surety  of  her  own  suspicions  being  right,  they  were  mere 
wild  conjecture  ;  she  had  but  the  word  of  her  son,  a  child 
of  twelve,  with  which  to  bear  up  her  statement.  And 
moreover,  who  could  tell  how  her  lord  would  resent  such 
insults  to  his  guest,  such  accusation  to  his  son  ? 

And  Ninette,  though  generous  and  honest  as  the  day, 
and  in  many  things  courageous,  was  a  true  woman.  She 
thought  of  ber  husband's  employment,  of  her  children's 
welfare,  of  her  happy  home  in  the  little,  bright,  ivy-hung 
lodge, — she  could  not  endanger  all  these. 

So  she  held  her  peace,  and  went  sadly  homeward  in 
the  hot,  late  evening  time.  In  the  porch  there  was  a  gay 
group,  Victor  and  his  sisters,  and  little  Raoul,  with  his 
wondrous  cuirassier,  and  Paulin,  who,  although  an 
equerry,  deigned  to  be  not  a  little  in  love  with  the  black- 
eyed  elder  daughter  of  the  lodge. 

The  girl  turned  to  her  mother  in  unaffected  concern — 

"Oh,  mere, — that  beautiful  duchess  is  ill." 

"  Hi  J" — Ninette's  eyes  met  her  son's. 

"Yes,"  interposed  the  equerry.  "Her  women  found 
her  in  a  swoon  last  night,  and  she  has  not  risen  to-day ; 
though  she  will  insist,  I  dare  say,  on  going  to  Paris  for 
that  fete  she  is  to  give  to  the  princes.  The  physicians 
speak  of  fever.  Mademoiselle  Marie's  kind  little  heart  is 
quite  distressed  for  Miladi." 

"  Dost  thou  think  because  a  woman  is  a  duchess  she 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  581 

must  never  suffer,  Marie?"  said  Ninette,  somewhat 
roughly,  going  within  to  lay  aside  her  great  cloak. 

"There  is  evil  against  her,  mere  ?"  whispered  Victor. 

"Yes,  I  fear  there  is  evil,''  said  his  mother,  with  a 
sigh.     "And  I  could  not  see  Tricotrin  1" 


CHAPTER  LXIV. 

While  Ninette  sought  for  him  at  the  tavern,  and  rode 
her  mule  back  in  sorrow  and  perplexity,  he  was  sitting  on 
the  oak  settle  within  the  porch  of  the  little  river-house, 
looking  out  down  the  reach  of  the  stream. 

All  things  were  still.  The  cat  slept,  curled  among 
violet-roots.  The  fowls  and  pigeons  were  gone  to  roost. 
The  swallows  had  ceased  their  fluttering  and  murmuring 
among  the  ivy.  The  little  Lorraine  girl  had  gone  to  her 
own  people.  The  dead  had  been  borne  out,  by  tender, 
reverent  hands,  through  the  green  garden  ways,  and 
down  the  water-steps,  and  into  the  waiting  boat ;  and 
grand'mere  had  been  left  to  her  last  resting-place  under 
vhe  blossoming  acacias  of  the  vine  country  other  birth. 

In  the  deserted  house  there  was  no  sound  ;  the  gathered 
roses  had  withered,  and  hung  their  heads ;  the  clock  had 
stopped,  for  none  had  remembered  to  wind  its  works;  on 
the  brick  hearth  there  was  no  fire  ;  the  evening  shadows 
stole  softly  through  all  the  little  desolate  chambers.  On 
a  chestnut-bough  outside  the  door  even  Mistigri  was 
silent,  and  very  quiet,  watching  with  her  black  sad  eyes 
the  flitting  of  the  bats  and  owls. 

ilis  own  gaze  never  wandered  from  the  river,  which 
was  half  in  shadow,  half  in  light,  as  the  sun  went  down. 
Eia  thoughts  were  with  the  old  lost  years. 

Before  his  sighl  there  hovered  the  gay  and  graceful 
shapes  of  a  child  at  play  among  I  he  tall  scarlet  bean-flow- 
ers  ;  of  a  child  swaying  on  the  lit  he  earth-drooping  branch 
of  a  beech-tree;   of  a  child   leaning   over   the  side   of  a 

49* 


582  TRICOTRIN, 

brown  boat,  and  dipping  her  arms  down  into  the  water, 
and  laughing  when  the  keel  grated  on  the  rocky  shore, 
and  singing — singing  ever  like  the  birds  at  spring-time — 
from  early  dawn  all  through  the  day,  till  nightfall ;  of  a 
child  with  the  glad  swift  voice  of  childhood  and  the  dark 
dreaming  gaze  of  a  woman,  and  all  the  fond,  fair,  innocent 
freedom  of  a  forest-creature  taught  human  love,  but 
knowing  naught  of  human  fear. 

The  time  had  been  when  he,  in  his  madness,  had  once 
dreamed  that  she  like  the  young  forest-thing  would  have 
returned  to  the  hand  that  had  fed  and  to  the  home  that 
had  sheltered  her,  as  the  fawn  returns  affrighted  by  the 
noise  of  the  hunters,  and  by  the  bitterness  of  the  water- 
springs,  and  by  the  gall  of  the  collar,  and  by  the  width  of 
the  great  plains  in  the  new  lands  of  its  wandering. 

But  he  had  been  in  error.  His  fawn  had  gone  where 
the  pastures  were  palace-gardens,  and  the  brooks  were 
the  well-springs  of  pleasure,  and  the  thickets  bore  the 
honey-laden  buds  of  triumph,  and  the  gilded  collar  was 
but  a  jeweled  bauble  by  the  chimes  of  wljose  bells  she 
could  lure  all  other  herds  to  follow  her. 

And  he  sat  alone  in  the  little  house  by  the  river. 

The  sun  set;  the  glow  faded  off  the  water;  the  dream- 
ing hum  of  night-gnats  was  the  only  sound  on  the  air ; 
the  dews  fell  thick  on  grass,  and  leaf,  and  blossom.  He 
never  stirred ;  he  never  took  his  gaze  from  off  the  gliding 
current.  -For  him  the  hushed  night-air  was  filled  with 
the  echoes  of  a  young  voice  that  never  more  would  sound 
through  that  familiar  place  ;  for  him  the  shadowy  solitude 
was  haunted  by  the  vision  of  a  young  face  that  never 
more  would  smile  on  that  deserted  home. 

And  thus  his  recompense  came  to  him;  thus  her  debt 
was  paid,  in  that  common  wage  of  bitterness  and  suffer- 
ing whereby  woman  often  requites  the  love  of  man,  and 
fate  ever  requites  the  life  that  follows  the  law  of  mercy 
and  forgets  itself. 

A  step  sounded  on  the  rocky  landing-stair.  He  started, 
and  slowly  arose  ;  in  the  full,  lustrous  moonlight  that 
now  streamed  over  land  and  stream,  he  saw  the  one  for 
whom  he  had  waited. 

He  motioned  his  hand  behind  him. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         583 

"Go  within,  Gervase;  all  is  yours." 

The  young  peasant,  hardy,  sun-bronzed,  strong  as  an 
ox  of  the  field,  trembled  like  a  child. 

"Ah!  What  can  I  say? — how  can  I  thank  you? 
Such  priceless  goodness  ! " 

"Chut!  Goodness  to  enable  a  man  to  marry  1  I  never 
heard  that  before.  Were  it  goodness  to  give  you  a  knife 
whereby  you  could  cut  your  throat?'' 

Gervase  smiled ;  but  his  mouth  quivered  with  strong 
emotion,  which,  save  for  his  five-and-twenty  years  of  man- 
hood, would  have  found  relief  in  tears. 

"  It  is  goodness  that  gives  heaven  upon  earth!"  he  mur- 
mured. "  You  know — all  her  youth  must  have  gone  by  ; 
I  am  so  poor,  and  she  is  only  a  little  servant-maiden  ;  and 
when  one  works  so  hard,  so  hard,  the  eyes  get  dim, 
and  the  hair  gets  gray,  and  the  time  of  age  comes  so 
SQon  ! " 

"I  know  !  And  you — you  think  there  is  naught  upon 
earth  like  that  little  servant-maiden  1  Well — so  best. 
Let  it  last." 

"But  how  can  I  ever  repay  you?" 

"  Hush  !  Think  you  not  that,  when  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte lay  dying,  the  memory  of  that  Alpine  shepherd 
whom  he  made  happy  with  the  gift  of  a  meadow  and  a 
homestead,  was  sweeter  to  him  than  the  memories  of  all 
his  victories?  Besides — you  will  pay  me  by  taking  heed 
of  all  these  dumb  things,  all  these  birds,  all  these  trees." 

The  young  man  bent  before  him,  with  tender,  tremu- 
lous reverence. 

"  They  shall  be  as  sacred  to  me  as  she!" 

"  That  is  enough  !  And  now — go  within.  I  am  late, 
and  must  lose  no  more  time." 

"  Is  it  true,  then  ?"  the  peasant  asked,  wistfully,  "  true 
that  the  boulevards  have  risen  ?" 

"No.  But  it  is  true  that  the  students  may  rise.  Rise 
— to  be  massacred.  Go  within,  Gervase — I  would  start, 
alone." 

"But — if  there  be  massacres?"  gasped  the  youth,  mis- 
taking his  answer.  "If  harm  come  to  you ?  If  we  see 
\  ou  do  more  ?" 

"Pooh!     Do  you  not  remember? — I  am  the  Wander- 


584  TRICOTRIN, 

ing  Jew!  Well — if  harm  do,  if  even  Ahasuerus  be  given 
the  divine  gift  of  death,  I  have  had  a  care  that  all  this  shall 
be  for  thee  and  thine.  For  you  are  gentle-natured  and 
worthy  of  trust,  Gervase.  And  when  I  die — if  I  die — 
make  my  grave  yonder,  under  that  great  old  beech,  where 
I  shall  hear  the  singing  of  the  river  forever,  and  my  people 
will  know  where  I  lie." 

He  smiled  as  he  spoke  ;  but  there  was  that  in  the  smile 
which  only  deepened  the  lingering  and  wistful  melancholy 
of  the  words. 

Gervase  glanced  up,  and  caught  the  look  upon  his  face, 
and  trembled  with  a  vague  sense  of  near  calamity. 

"Farewell,"  said  Tricotrin,  with  another  backward 
gesture  of  his  hand  toward  the  house. 

The  young  peasant  obeyed  it,  as  a  dog  obeys  a  sign. 
He  himself  went  down  by  the  stone  steps  to  the  water's 
edge,  and  entered  the  little  boat  which  waited  there  among 
the  sand  and  sedges.  He  paused,  with  the  oar  resting  on 
the  bank,  and  looked  long — as  men  look  on  what  they 
leave  forever — at  the  familiar  homely  place,  with  the  stars 
of  the  midsummer-eve  shining  above  its  ivy-covered  roof 
and  on  its  ivy-shrouded  easements. 

He  looked  long :  then  let  his  oars  fall,  and  drifted  down 
the  stream. 

When  the  youth  stole  forth  under  the  cover  of  the 
boughs,  and  gazed  out  down  the  course  of  the  river,  the 
little  boat  was  far  away,  floating  darkly,  like  a  leaf  adrift, 
upon  the  broad,  white,  starlit  reach  of  the  river. 

He  was  gone — nevermore  to  return  to  the  home  which 
the  Waif  once  had  shared  with  the  swallows. 


CHAPTER   LXV. 

In  the  dusky  hot  close  of  the  late  summer  day  in  which 
he  reached  Paris,  there  met  him  one  of  the  brethren  of 
that  religious  community,  who  commonly  called  him  their 
Alp-dog  of  travail  and  trouvaille,  who  brought  them  so 
many  well-nigh  lost  lives,  found,  half  frozen,  under  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  585 

snows  of  abject  poverty,  or  in  the  crevasses  of  bottomless 
crime.  Of  creeds  he  had  no  love  ;  of  priests  he  had  as 
little;  but  he  knew  that  these  men  were  of  pure  zeal,  of 
sincere  faith,  and  of  a  charity  which  labored  unceasingly, 
and  gave  its  ministrations  without  boundaries  of  code  or 
cadence.  Tie  honored  them,  and  aided  them,  and  they — 
loved  him  in  return,  and  felt  before  him  something  of  that 
wonder  with  which  the  early  leaders  of  their  church  saw 
the  virtues  of  their  own  evangel  surpassed  in  the  pagan 
Julian. 

In  the  sultry  angry  evening  the  monk  paused  to  greet 
him. 

"  It  is  you,  Tricotrin?"  he  said,  with  welcome  shining 

in  his  sad  sunken  eyes.     "  You  have  been  long  absent?" 

"  Yes:  who  would  stay  beneath  tile  and  slate,  in  this 

weather,  if  ho  could  have  the  roofing  of  green  leaves  and 

pine-branches  ?" 

"  Well — there  is  ever  work  to  be  found  and  done  in  the 
cities." 

"Doubtless;  but  there  ought  not  always  to  be  the 
doing  of  work  in  this  life  of  ours;  Nature  gave  us  beauty 
and  pleasure,  we  have  a  right  to  be  still,  and  idle,  and 
enjoy  the  twain  sometimes.  But — here  you  and  I  do  not 
think  alike.  Tell  me,  how  has  it  been  with  that  poor 
wretch  I  brought  to  your  doors,  after  the  thieves'  burn- 
ing ?" 

"  It  is  very  ill  with  him.  He  has  never  recovered  ;  he 
dies  by  inches.  He  has  never  left  the  bed  on  which  we 
first  laid  him  His  lower  limbs  arc  dead.  But  his  brain 
is  clear  enough  ;  he  talks  at  times  with  a  terrible  wit  and 
irony.  He  must  some  day  have  known  the  glittering 
side  of  the  greal  world's  vices.  He  has  asked  often  for 
you, — not  by  name,  indeed,  but  for  the  one  who  saved 
him.  I  have  sought  for  you  often  ;  lor  at  times  he  is 
hard  to  pacify,  because  we  do  not  take  you  to  his  side. 
We  have  sent  to  all  your  usual  haunts,  bul  we  could  not 
hear  of  you.  You  will  come  and  see  him — now?" 
Tricotrin  made  qo  answer. 

"  He  cannot    live,"   (he   monk   pursued.      "  A  few  days 
— or  weeks  at  uttermost — will  close  his  life.      You  will 


586  TRICOTRIN, 

come  to  him  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  he  has  somewhat  on 
his  mind  that  he  desires  to  impart.     You  will  come  ?" 

"  You  are  certain  he  cannot  survive  ?" 

"  Certain.     It  is  impossible." 

Tricotrin  paused  some  moments,  silent  still  ;  then  he 
raised  his  head. 

"  Yes  :  I  will  come  to-morrow  afternoon." 

Then  he  bade  the  brother  farewell,  and  went  on  his 
way  with  his  knapsack  on  his  shoulders,  and  the  dust  on 
his  feet,  and  the  monkey  on  his  wrist ;  but,  for  once,  with 
no  song  on  his  lips. 

On  the  morrow  he  kept  his  tryst. 

The  great,  dark,  frowning  pile  of  the  hospital  loomed 
through  the  gay  sunlight  of  a  lustrous  and  cloudless  day. 
The  bell  rang  dully  through  the  stillness  like  a  toll  for  a 
passing  soul.  The  small  postern  door  within  the  entrance- 
gates  slowly  unclosed.  The  brethren  welcomed  him  with 
few,  terse  words,  and  led  the  way  to  the  quaint,  noiseless, 
cloistered  nook  where  Paulus  Canaris  lay  dying — a  little 
naked  cell,  looking  out  upon  a  court  where  a  single  grape- 
vine, thrusting  forth  green  leaves  and  green  clusters, 
alone  recalled  the  light  and  loveliness  of  the  year's  rich 
summer-time. 

The  Greek  was  stretched,  exhausted  and  with  his  lower 
limbs  paralyzed  ;  maimed  and  disfigured  still  from  the 
flames,  yet  killed,  less  by  the  fire  than  by  the  vices  of  his 
own  past.  The  monk  went  to  him,  and  said  a  few  words: 
then  left  the  cell,  closing  the  heavy  door  behind  him. 
The  gaze  of  Canaris  fastened  with  a  great  amazement, 
with  a  great  awe,  upon  the  face  of  his  visitant.  All  his 
emaciated  frame  trembled  like  a  leaf. 

On  Tricotrin  the  sun  shone  full. 

"  Great  Heaven  1"  cried  the  Greek,  with  the  dews  stand- 
ing on  his  brow.  "Speak  tome: — speak! — are  you  a 
living  man,  or  only  the  wraith  of  the  dead?" 

"  I  was  once  the  boy  whom  you  wronged,"  he  an- 
swered, simply  ;  there  was  no  passion  in  his  voice,  only 
an  unutterable  scorn — the  scorn  of  truth  and  of  courage 
— for  a  traitor. 

"  I  knew — I  knew!"  muttered  the  dying  wretch.  "  I 
knew  that  night  when  you  dragged  me  from  the  fires  ;  I 


THE  STORY    OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  587 

never  dreamed  it  uutil  then.  It  was  the  look  in  your 
eyes  that  told  me — that  look !  " 

Tricotrin  answered  nothing  ;  he  stood  at  the  foot  of  the 
pallet,  while  the  midsummer  light  shone  like  an  aureole 
on  his  head. 

What  could  he  say  to  this  man  ? — whose  whole  life  had 
been  one  long  perfidy,  whose  whole  existence  had  been 
one  long  assassination  of  peace,  and  faith,  and  honor  ? 

The  Greek  shivered,  and  buried  his  face,  and  lay  silent 
and  sore  afraid.  It  was  to  him  as  a  resurrection  from  the 
grave 

"You  know  that  I  stole  the  jewels?"  he  cried,  sud- 
denly, looking  upward  at  that  sun-circled  head  as  at  an 
avenging  angel. 

"  I  did  know  it — I  saw  you  in  the  act." 

"Yet  you  never  exposed  me? — you  never  declared 
your  own  innocence  ?" 

"  I  was  falsely  accused.  Those  who  could  so  accuse 
me  were  unworthy  of  proof  of  their  error  : — as  you  were 
beneath  vengeance  when  you  stood  by  silent  in  your  sin. 
Oh,  my  God!"'  he  cried,  a  thousand  memories  awaking  in 
him,  am!  breaking  forth  in  rapid,  burning  words.  "I 
was  a  youth;  I  remembered  only  thai  I  came  of  free 
races  and  bold  blood,  that  I  would  never  live  beneath  the 
roof  where  my  honor  had  been  outraged,  that  I  would 
never  bear  the  titles  of  a  father  who  insulted  and  who 
hated  me.  1  was  too  proud  to  clear  myself  of  that  foul, 
felonious  charge ;  I  was  too  full  of  scorn  to  harm  so  vile 
a  thing  as  you; — I  only  longed  for  the  sweet  wild  liberty 
of  my  mother's  shores,  for  the  sea-breezes  of  freedom  and 
danger,  for  the  joy  of  life  untrammeled  by  pomps  and  un- 
tainted by  haired.  1  was  only  a  boy  ;  a  boy  full  of  chival- 
rous love  of  wounded  faith,  of  thirst  for  a  forest-animal's 
innocent,  dauntless,  wandering  days.  1  never  remem- 
bered that,  in  leaving  you  beside  my  brother,  1  left  an 
adder  in  the  purples  I  abandoned  to  him; — I  never 
thoughl  that,  knowing  how  I  ,-|>ared  yon,  you  would  feed 
and  fatten  on  the  bounty  of  my  race  in  pampered  luxury 
for  years,  and  stain  its  honor,  in  return, by  stealth,  at  the 
very  hearth  whose  fires  had  warmed  you.  1  never 
thought — I  was  a  child,  and  acted  in  a  child's  headlong 


588  TR1C0TRIN, 

sacrifice  and  passion — I  spared  you,  and  you  rewarded 
me  a  score  years  later  by  stabbing1  in  the  dark  the  only 
creature  that  I  loved  I" 

The  words  died  in  his  throat.  Looking  on  this  man, 
the  bitterness  of  hate  consumed  him  ;  the  dead  wrongs 
of  his  boyhood  rose  up  from  their  distant  graves. 

The  Greek  cowered  down,  shuddering  as  under  a  rain 
of  blows.  He  knew  well  what  his  sins  had  been  against 
that  lofty,  generous,  unsuspecting,  northern  race,  which 
had  fed,  and  clothed,  and  sheltered,  and  trusted  him  : — 
sins  which,  budding  first  in  thefts  of  gems  to  sate  the 
boyish  avai'ice  of  a  born  gambler,  had  found  their  latest 
crown  in  thefts  of  a  wife's  love  and  of  a  husband's  honor: 
— sins  born  at  their  earliest  and  their  latest  from  one 
root,  a  devil's  envy  of  the  power  and  wealth  and  ease  of 
those  who  had  succored,  and  pampered,  and  lifted  him 
from  a  hireling's  servitude  to  a  friend's  estate.  In  that 
hour  all  the  vileness  of  his  life  came  out  before  his  sight, 
and  appalled  him  with  an  exceeding  horror.  His  brain 
was  giddy  ;  his  soul  sick ;  he  could  only  stare  blankly  at 
the  face  above  him,  and  at  the  blinding  light  of  a  summer 
day's  sun. 

"You  have  lived  like  this!"  he  gasped.  "And  all 
deemed  you  dead, — dead  in  that  ring  of  water.  I 
wronged  you — yes,  heavily.  I  dared  not  say  I  stole 
the  diamonds  to  pay  a  debt  of  the  dice  ;  and  your  father 
always  smiled  most  on  me  when  most  I  hurt  you — so  I 
kept  silence.     Tell  me, — you  have  been  content?" 

A  smile,  that  blinded  him  like  the  sunbeams,  came  on 
his  listener's  face. 

"Content!  There  are  greater  things  than  content- 
ment." 

"  But  have  you  never  regretted  ?" 

"Never." 

"What?  Is  it  possible?  Christ!  how  strange  you 
are  !  All  that  men  covet  lay  in  your  hands  ;  and  you — 
you  flung  them  aside  thus  !  Yet— since  you  do  thus 
live, — he  cannot  justly  own  his  lands,  his  gold,  his  earl- 
dom?" 

"Silence!  Dare  you  to  speak  his  name  ? — you — the 
vile  paramour  of  his  accursed  wife  !" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         589 

The  Greek  made  no  reply :  still  staring  at  him  with 
the  same  half-senseless,  half-incredulous  stupor  of  amaze. 

To  the  Athenian — who  had  been  born  in  servitude, 
and  stolen  his  way  to  pleasure  through  secret  sin,  and 
sold  his  soul  for  the  mere  touch  of  gold,  and  risen  by 
foul  means  into  the  light  of  affluence,  and  fallen  again 
through  the  gambler's  avarice  and  the  traitor's  crimes 
into  that  lowest  deep  wherein  Death  now  had  found  him 
— this  renunciation,  this  contentment,  this  abandonment 
of  honors  and  riches  for  the  mere  sweet  sake  of  freedom, 
were  mysteries  that  bewildered  and  appalled  him,  half 
sunk  in  the  stupors  of  dissolution  as  were  his  memories 
and  his  senses. 

"  And  you  have  never  regretted  1"  he  murmured  over 
and  over  again. 

Tricotrin  turned  from  him,  and  gazed  out  to  where 
the  late  vine  budded  in  its  deserted  home.  lie  had 
never  regretted — never  save  once,  when  he  had  seen  the 
white  and  purple  violets  in  the  bosom  of  a  woman. 

His  thoughts  wandered  far  back,  over  the  length  of 
many  years,  to  that  long-perished  time  when  of  his  own 
will  he  had  forsaken  the  treasures,  and  the  honors,  and 
the  luxurious  ease,  of  his  high  heritage,  to  go  forth  to 
the  freedom  of  his  mother's  people,  to  the  simplicities  of 
a  life  without  ceremonial  and  care. 

It  had  been  a  boy's  wild  generosity,  a  boy's  vivid  pas- 
sion, a  boy's  headlong  impulse,  which  had  sent  him  forth 
from  the  home  of  his  birthright,  sO  that  the  child  whom 
beloved  might  reign  there  in  his  stead  ;  so  that  he  should 
owe  naught  to  a  race  which  had  scorned  and  had  wounded 
his  mother;  so  that  he  should  be  delivered  forever  from 
the  trammels  of  greatness  which  galled  the  sea-lion's  spirit 
within  him;  so  that  he  should  be  freed  forever  to  live  his 
own  life,  and  to  roam  wheresoever  he  would,  unchained, 
unarraigned,  uncrowned 

The  daring,  hardv  blood  of  the  sea-born  Armorican 
races  had   been  iu  him.      There   had    lived  in  him  the  old 

dauntless  hardy  pride  of  the  Breton  peasants,  "Me  to 
deuzar  armorig,"  when  they  stood,  loyal  but  equal,  be- 
fore their  haughtiest  seigneur  of  Rohan,  Rochefort,  or 
Rochejaquelin  races.      He  had  scorned  the  gilded  cages 

50 


590  TRICOTRIN, 

of  riches  and  of  rank,  and  broken  his  silken  bonds  as  a 
young  lion-cub  breaks  its  cords,  disdaining1  to  hold  what 
was  begrudged  to  him,  craving  only  the  open  air,  and 
the  breath  of  the  forest,  the  salt  waves,  and  the  sweep 
of  the  winds. 

He  had  gone,  leaving  his  crowns  to  other  brows,  his 
gold  to  other  hands;  gone,  while  they  deemed  him 
dead,  to  the  liberty  for  which  he  was  athirst.  Gone  to 
the  shores  where  his  mother's  fleet  feet  had  raced  with 
the  incoming  tides,  where  her  eyes  had  gazed  at  the  sun 
like  the  eagle's  ;  where  the  waves,  and  the  breeze,  and 
the  storms  had  given  her  beauty  their  grandeur,  and  her 
courage  their  strength,  and  her  soul  their  liberty,  which 
lived  again  in  his.  Gone  to  those  years  of  freedom,  and 
gladness,  and  love,  and  mirth,  and  charity,  which  were 
uttered  in  one  word  to  the  people  that  loved  him — the 
word  of  his  self-chosen  title — Tricotrin. 

Poor,  indeed,  he  ever  had  been  in  the  coinage  of  worldly 
wealth.  Some  little  gold  stored  away  in  the  hollow  of 
a  rock,  and  bequeathed  to  him  by  one  of  his  mother's 
brethren,  to  whom  he  was  dear,  and  who  alone  knew 
whence  the  boy,  who  wandered  to  their  western  shore, 
had  come,  made  all  his  portion.  But  he  had  been  rich 
in  every  other  thing  beyond  compare — rich  as  with  the 
golden  light  of  suns  that  never  set. 

A  king  without  a  diadem,  a  priest  without  a  stole,  a 
soldier  without  a  sword,  a  leader  whose  hosts  were  unseen 
of  the  world,  a  poet  whose  melodies  asked  no  answer 
from  the  trumpet  of  fame,  a  sovereign  whose  territory 
was  meted  by  no  measuring-rod,  but  stretched  wherever 
men  enjoyed  or  suffered, — he  had  lived  his  life. 

And  regret  had  never  touched  him.  His  years  had 
been  sweet  and  mellow,  and  full  of  color  and  melody,  and 
fair  to  his  sight  and  his  senses.  He  had  never  regretted 
— never  save  once,  when,  out  of  the  purest  and  holiest 
of  his  acts,  there  had  arisen  the  greatest  bitterness  that 
he  had  ever  known. 

The  Greek,  still  gazing  at  him  like  one  half  blinded, 
strove  to  raise  his  feeble  frame  and  husband  his  sinking 
breath.  He  was  not  repentant,  not  remorseful ;  he  had 
long  ere  then  killed  his  conscience,  and  the  sins  he  had 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         591 

sinned  seemed  precious  to  him ;  they  were  the  relics  of 
his  youth,  the  laurels  of  his  prowess,  the  things  that  told 
him  all  he  had  once  been.  But,  in  some  dim  sense,  he 
felt  the  wonder  and  the  greatness  of  this  abdication,  as 
he  felt  those  of  that  mercy  which,  knowing  him  a  foe  so 
vile,  yet  bad  dealt  with  him  as  with  one  innocent. 

"Are  you  a  madman  ?  or  a  god?"  he  muttered.  "You 
must  be  one  or  other.  And  you  have  never  regretted  1 
— you  must  be  made  of  other  stuff  than  mere  humanity. 
To  lose  all  that — to  lay  it  down — and  never  long  to  seize 
it  once  again  1  You  must  be  more  or  less  than  man  I 
Such  a  heritage!  such  a  heritage!" 

His  hearer's  voice  crossed  his  words,  with  a  grave  elo- 
quence of  scorn  in  it. 

"Whatever  I  be,  you,  of  all  men,  can  least  appraise 
my  act  or  motive.  Speak  no  more  of  that  dead  time;  all 
the  issue  of  it  lies  with  you.  I  do  not  care  to  raise  re- 
proach against  a  dying  wretch  ;  nor  do  I  care  to  linger 
with  you  You  desired  to  see  me: — wherefore,  if  there 
be  no  remorse  in  you  toward  Estmere?" 

"There  is  none  in  me!"  said  the  Greek,  with  sudden 
fierceness.  "I  hated  him  always!  Oh,  he  was  liberal, 
gracious,  full  of  generous  gifts, — 1  know  that, — but  I  hated 
him.  lie  was  so  just,  so  proud,  so  calm,  so  far  above 
me,  so  wedded  to  stern  truth,  lie  was  a  living  rebuke; 
I  hated  him.  I  stoh;  his  wife's  love — yes;  I  stole  her 
beauty,  I  made  that  high-born  Austrian  woman  mine. 
But  though  I  dishonored  his  name,  I  could  not  dishonor 
him  :  that  was  what  went  so  bitter  with  me." 

"  Peace  1  If  you  cannot  speak  his  name  for  pardon 
and  repentance,  do  not  dare  to  breathe  it  in  my  hearing!" 

"You  love  him  still?  when  he  reigns  in  your  stead, 
when  he  sits  in  your  throne!     But  wait — wait  an  instant 

— and  hear  me.     You  have  twice  done  good  toward  : 

you,  to  whom  I  ever  did  evil  in  the  time  of  your  child- 
hood. I  have  no  remorse  in  me  Willi  my  last  breath 
I  shall  curse  the  world  ami  all  in  it,  Bui  I  would  tell 
you  one  thing  ere  I  die;  it  may  serve  you.  That  child 
whom  \  on  reared " 

His  hearer  turned  swiftly,  struck  as  bv  a  sharp  blow. 

"What  of  her?" 


592  TRICOTRIN, 

A  cynical  smile  flitted  over  the  blackened,  haggard 
face  of  Canaris. 

"  Ah,  there  is  one  thing  you  regret,  is  there  not  ?  Well, 
that  child  is  now  Duchess  de  Lira.  How  have  I  known 
it?  Men,  that  live  in  the  depths  of  infamy  I  have  lived  in, 
know  all  things.  We  are  sewer-rats — yes — but  we  under- 
mine palaces !  Look  you  !  after  you  gave  me  my  '  chance' 
I  watched  you.  I  did  not  dream  you  were  anything  save 
what  I  heard ;  but  I  did  not  lose  sight  of  your  life.  I 
saw  that  fair  thing  by  your  side  one  night  in  Paris. 
There  was  a  look  in  her  face,  a  glance,  a  smile,  no  matter 
what,  that  brought  a  fancy  to  my  thoughts,  a  memory  to 
my  mind.  I  saw  a  likeness  in  her.  It  set  me  to  seek 
out  her  history  ;  more  in  idleness  than  aught  else.  I 
was  miserably  poor,  and  had  not  then  taught  myself  the 
trades  of  coarser  crime.  I  played  long  with  this  fancy; 
at  length  I  learned  its  secret.  When  I  had  learned  it,  it 
was  of  no  use  to  me.  The  child  was  gone  from  you  ;  I 
could  not  tell  where.  Years  went  bv  ;  I  have  been  in 
the  prisons,  in  the  galleys.  One  day  this  winter,  a  great 
lady  gave  me  a  silver  piece  for  lifting  her  little  dog  out 
of  the  mud  as  she  went  to  her  carriage  ;  the  face  was  the 
same  face,  the  same  fancy  struck  me.  I  watched  and 
waited,  and  strung  this  and  that  hint  together ;  I  saw 
you  once  admitted  to  her  hotel;  I  guessed  the  truth, 
though  I  did  not  know  it  till  your  look  a  moment  since 
told  me  I  had  guessed  aright.  This  Duchess  de  Lira  is 
the  foundling  you  harbored — is  it  not  so  ?  Well,  and  of 
what  stock  did  that  stray  child  come?0 

"If  you  know,  say!  say,  for  God's  sake!" 

"Stoop  your  head  to  my  ear,  then.  Ah,  what  wealth 
this  had  been  to  me  if  I  had  lived,  and  owned  my  old 
cunning,  and  held  it  as  a  sword  that  might  fall  at  any 
moment  above  that  proud,  delicate  head!  Bend  nearer, 
that  I  may  whisper  it ;  a  great  lady's  honor  must  not  be 
tainted  aloud !  Now,  listen ;  will  you  curse  her,  I  won- 
der ?" 

"Speak  out!"  cried  his  hearer,  in  an  unendurable  tor- 
ture. "  If,  for  once,  you  do  not  lie — speak  out,  and  say  all 
you  know." 

"All  I  know!"  echoed  the  Greek,  with  a  dreary  cyn- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         593 

icism  upon  his  lips.  "Nay!  I  know  so  much — I  was  a 
slave,  that  mastered  more  than  my  lords ;  I  was  a  pam- 
pered spaniel,  that  nestled  in  patrician  bosoms ;  I  was  a 
thing  that  they  spurned  with  their  speech  in  the  world, 
but  caressed  with  their  lips  in  their  privacy:  those  lofty, 
languid,  fair,  sensual  women  !  All  I  know  ! — pshaw  ! — ■ 
would  you  have  me  tell  lords  they  are  bastards  ;  would 
you  have  me  tell  virgins  they  are  harlots  ?  Well,  well ! 
be  not  angered,  nor  in  haste.  I  would  gather  my  memo- 
ries,— let  me  think, — in  peace.  We  spoke  of  the  dainty 
duchess  ? — this  foundling  you  fed  on  brown  loaves  and 
goat's  milk,  and  who  pays  you  by  scattering  the  mud  of 
her  chariot-wheel  upon  you  as  she  sweeps  by  ?  You 
would  be  told  of  the  woman  who  bore  her  ?  Well,  that 
woman  is  called  Coriolis." 

A  loud  cry  rang  across  his  words — the  cry  of  an  unut- 
terable horror.  The  hands  of  Tricotrin  seized  him  where 
he  lay. 

"  You  lie  !  you  painted  snake  !  When  ever  yet  did 
you  stir  save  to  poison  ?  You  lie  ! — oh  devil  !  that  you 
stood  in  health  and  in  strength  before  me,  that  I  could 
deal  with  you  as  you  merit!" 

The  white  lips  of  the  Athenian  grew  paler  still  with 
fear  as  he  heard  ;  but  for  once  he  had  spoken  truth,  and 
he  had  that  courage  which  all  truth  confers. 

"  I  have  not  lied,"  he  said,  slowly;  "at  the  least,  not 
willingly.  She  is  the  daughter  of  Coriolis.  Take  thought. 
Is  there;  no  kinship  in  their  regard  ?  They  have  likeness 
in  unlikeness, — that  bright  glitter  of  hair,  that  mouth  like 
a  scarlet  blossom,  that  smile  that  is  so  sunlit,  yet  so  cold. 
They  are  dissimilar  also,  indeed,  as  are  the  water-lilies  of 
regal  lakes  and  the  poisoned  lilies  of  Indian  swamps ; 
but,  like  them,  they  have  likeness." 

His  listener's  grasp  fell  from  him;  Tricotrin  covered 
his  face  with  his  hands,  and  shuddered,  and  was  still. 

The  vision  of  Coriolis  rose  before  him  as  he  had  be- 
held it  in  her  youth  ;  and  he  remembered  the  enchant- 
ment of  its  smile,  and  saw  in  it  what  he  had  never  seen, 
and  knewthal  the  truth  had  been  uttered, — the  abhorred, 
polluted,  ghastly  truth  which  broke  in  on  him  with  the 
merciless  Hash  of  the  electric  Light,  that  breaks  the  dark- 

50* 


594  TRICOTRIN, 

ness  only  to  leave  it  tenfold  blacker,  thicker,  more  hideous, 
than  ere  its  gloom  was  pierced. 

But  still  he  strove  for  blindness,  still  he  would  not  be- 
hold what  that  flash  of  light  had  revealed.  He  was  as 
one  to  whom  the  glare  of  the  lightning  has  shown  some 
beloved  and  lovely  face,  stricken  white  and  lifeless,  float- 
ing on  some  deep  and  caverned  pool. 

"Likeness!  likeness!"  he  echoed,  wildly.  "You  dare 
say  this  thing  on  your  mere  sickly  fancy,  your  mere  de- 
lirious delusion  !  Your  brain  teems  with  vague  shapes 
as  you  lie  in  your  loneliness  ;  and  you  dare  thrust  these 
forward  as  facts  and  as  truths  ?  Gold  threads  in  the 
hair — a  rose-bloom  on  the  mouth — fine  things  indeed  to 
be  pointed  to  as  warrants  of  kinship,  as  registries  of 
birth !" 

"  Wait,"  said  Canaris,  with  his  old  malice  gleaming  in 
his  eyes,  tempered  by  a  new  emotion  of  pity  and  regret. 
"  Do  not  think  that  I  speak  so  idly,  or  that  I  give  voice 
to  death-bed  vagaries.  I  tell  you  a  fact  that  I  learned,  in 
case  that  fact  ever  may  serve  you  The  likeness  I  saw ; 
but  that  is  nothing.  How  I  know  the  truth  came  by 
pure  hazard,  as  most  things  do  after  all,  despite  men's 
prescience  and  scheming.  I  knew  Gerant,  Coriolis'  first 
lover, — you  remember  his  fame  on  the  lyric  theaters? — 
knew  him  well.  I  was  his  confidant  at  the  time  when 
he  took  that  pretty  thing  from  her  sea-cabin  to  bring  her 
out  on  the  stage.  I  thought  her  a  lovely  fool,  and  scarce 
saw,  myself,  what  he  would  do  with  her  ;  but  Gerant  knew 
better.  He  discerned  genius,  and — half  a  million  of  francs 
yearly,  in  her.  Well,  there  was  only  one  obstacle  to  her 
flight  with  him:  her  child  by  Bruno.  Coriolis  half  loved 
and  half  hated  it,  so  Gerant  told  me.  He  cursed  it  often 
enough,  himself,  and  would  have  thrown  it  in  the  sea  for 
his  part.  But  she  had  a  curious  reluctance  to  leave  it  to 
her  husband;  she  thought  he  would  murder  it  in  his  first 
passion.  She  wished  to  be  rid  of  it,  but  she  wished  to 
know  all  was  well  with  it.  It  was  a  female  child,  called, 
I  think,  like  her, — Madelon.  Gerant,  to  content  her, 
arranged  with  a  woman  he  knew, — a  chorus-singer,  hor- 
ribly poor,  and  who  had  a  throat-affection,  so  that  she 
could  no  longer  sing, — to  steal  the  infant  herself  when 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         595 

the  house  should  be  empty,  in  the  first  excitement  of  the 
fisher-folk  over  the  disappearance  of  Bruno's  wife,  and 
get  away  with  it  out  of  the  province.  That  was  done. 
The  simple  people  supposed  the  child  was  gone  with  its 
mother.  Gerant  gave  the  woman  a  large  sum  to  do  it, 
for  it  would  have  stood,  of  course,  as  a  crime  in  the  law. 
Some  year  or  so  afterward,  when  Madelon  Bruno  had 
made  her  mark  upon  Paris,  and  had  become  Coriolis,  I 
asked  Gerant  how  his  contrivance  had  answered.  He 
swore  bitterly,  and  said  the  little  wretch  had  died  of  fever, 
and  he  wished  its  mother  was  dead  also  !  She  had  just 
broken  with  him  for  Prince  Anatole,  and  made  mirth  of 
him  for  all  the  money  he  had  expended  in  insuring  her 
staa;e-successes — money  which  he  never  saw  back  again. 
Now,  I  never  once  remembered  this  story  of  the  child 
until  I  saw  the  face  of  the  girl  by  your  side  one  festival- 
night  in  Paris,  and  learned  she  was  only  a  foundling 
whom  you  had  taken  the  caprice  of  protecting.  Then  I 
said  in  my  soul,  'That  girl  is  Madelon  Bruno:  and  the 
daughter  of  Coriolis  did  not  die.'" 

He  paused,  exhausted  by  his  lengthened  speech  :  Trico- 
trin's  hard  convulsive  breathing  alone  stirred  the  silence. 

"This  is  no  proof!"  he  muttered,  fiercely,  at  length. 
"This  is  but  suspicion,  conjecture,  imagination.  The 
child  died;  you  heard  that  from  Gerant;  why  should 
you  dream  that  she — she " 

"  1  do  not  dream  ;  I  know,"  resumed  Canaris.  "IV11 
it  slowly,  for  I  am  feeble.  But  patience — you  will  lie 
contented!  When  1  saw  that  girl  in  Paris.  Gerant  had 
been  long  dead.  But  I  remember  the  name  of  the  chorus- 
singer:  it  was  Rose  Leroux.  I  always  taught  myself  to 
remember  Dames:  they  are  so  useful.  I  inquired  fur  her; 
I  heard  with  difficulty,  for  people  so  soon  forget,  that  she 
had  been  along  while  out  of  the  country,  had  returned, 
had  committed  a-  robbery  with  violence  on  an  old  woman, 
and  was  then  at  the  galleys.  Well — 1  went  thither  my- 
self, not  long  after,  for  a  more  intellect  mil  crime.  1  have 
not  been  many  months  released.  1  saw  yon  one  day  this 
winter  go  into  the  Lira  palace;  and  1  saw  the  face  of  its 
duchess.  1  -ani  to  myself,  though  it  seemed  like  insan- 
ity,— is  that  his  foundling  throned  there  '(  is  that  Madelon 


596  TRICOTRIN, 

Bruno  among  the  sovereigns  of  the  earth  ?    I  could  not 
tell ;    but  I  sought  out  the  woman  Leroux.     She  was 
among  the  herd  at  Chaumont.     We  had  manj  talks  to- 
gether.    There  were  no  secrets  between  us;  we  had  the 
one  bond  of  sympathy — we  had  both  known  the  Bagne. 
By  degrees  I  brought  her  to  the  subject  of  that  child  of 
Jean  Bruno's.     She  laughed — she  is  horribly  ugly,  and 
ugliest  when  she  laughs — and  told   me  that   the  child 
might  be  dead,  but  had  not  died  with  her.     When  she 
took  it  she  never  meant  to  be  at  the  burden  of  keeping 
the  child;    but  she  wanted  Gerant's   money;    and  she 
always  obeyed  what  he  told  her.    She  did  not  know  well 
how  to  get  rid  of  it ;  she  kept  it  a  year,  as  Gerant  sent 
plenty  of  gold,  storing  the  money  up  to  enable  her  to  get 
off  to  America,  for  she  had  even  then  done  what  made 
her  uneasy  of  the  law.     Then,  as  he  wrote  her  sharply 
word  that  she  might  look  for  but  little  in  future,  she 
tramped  through  half  France  on  foot,  with  her  gold  and 
the  child.      She  wrote  back   to   Gerant  that  the  little 
Madelon  was  dead  of  scarlet  fever,  and  had  been  buried 
as  her  own  natural  daughter;    but  in  truth  she  laid  it 
down  in  the  dawn  one  day,  in  the  loneliest  part  of  a 
wooded  place  by  the  Loire.     Then  she  made  her  way 
swiftly  to  a  seaport,  and  crossed  the  ocean  westward. 
She  said  she  should  have  sent  the  child  to  Coriolis ;  but 
she  was  afraid  of  rousing  the  wrath  of  Gerant,  who  had 
great  power  over  her.     She  thought  it  no  harm  to  leave 
the  child  in  the  wood;  she  had  abandoned  in  like' fashion 
one  of  her  own,  who  had  been  picked  up  by  a  carrier  and 
had  thriven  well.     I  asked  her  why  she  did  not  leave  it 
at  the  foundling  hospital ;  she  said  she  had  cause  even 
then  to  shun  cities;    and  besides — she  hated  Coriolis, 
she  had  loved  Gerant  —  she  desired  the  baby  Madelon 
to  perish,  though  she  said  she  could  not  hold  it  under  the 
water  to  kill  it,  its  eyes  were  so  pretty.  I  asked  her  what 
name  the  child  bore  with  her :  she  said  it  could  barely 
speak,  but  called  itself  Viva,  from  hearing  the  woman  of 
the  cottage,  where  she  had  hid  all  the  year  with  it,  call 
a  -spaniel  dog  by  that  name  continually.     I  asked  her 
also  if  she  knew  the  fate  of  the  child  :  she  said  no — she 
had  not  given  it  two  thoughts  since  that  time,  until  I  re- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         59 f 

called  Gerant's  name  to  her.  That  is  all.  Are  you  satis- 
fied? If  you  want  more,  go  to  Rose  Leroux  up  at  Chau- 
mont ;  they  know  you  there,  though  you  have  committed 
none  of  the  crimes  that  are  the  common  passports  to  its 
community.  You  see,— I  spoke  of  no  dream,  no  delu- 
sion. Well! — from  Madelou  Bruno  the  actress  to  Made- 
Ion  Bruno  the  duchess,  it  is  but  a  step  !  Both  have  sold 
their  beauty,  and  one  has  her  diamonds  set  round  a  mar- 
riage-ring, and  the  other  her  diamonds  set  round  a  drink- 
ing-cup;  one  has  a  little  higher  price  than  the  other;  that 
is  all!  It  is  a  pity  I  lie  here  useless  and  helpless;  what 
wealth  I  would  have  made  out  of  this  history  !  And  you 
— and  you — will  do  nothing,  save  strive  with  all  your 
might  to  spare  her  its  knowledge.  You  are  the  great 
spendthrifts  of  the  world: — you  men  who  throw  away 
your  opportunities  to  do  evil.     What  fortunes  you  miss  I" 


CHAPTER  LXVI. 


The  doors  of  the  monastic  refuge  once  more  unclosed, 
and  Tricotrin  passed  out  into  the  world  of  living  men. 

The  full  ardent  light  of  the  late  day  was  about  him  as 
he  went;  but  his  eyes  were  blind  to  it,  and  he  moved 
onward  like  one  drunk  and  stupefied  with  wine. 

There  was  no  hope  left  in  him  that  this  thing  were 
false.  The  words  of  the  dying  Athenian  had  carried  the 
incisive  force  of  truth  with  thorn,  lie  had  spoken  as  men 
do  not  speak  when  they  lie,  and  his  utterances  had  fallen 
deep  into  his  hearer's  heart,  as  aquafortis  into  metal. 
With  less  circumstantial  precision  than  that  which  his 
narrative  had  borne,  his  Listener  would  have  felt  that  it 
was  true,  by  the  same  ghastly  sense  of  hopeless  certitude 
wherewiih  the  one  who  loves  hears  tidings  of  the  death 
of  what  he  loves. 

A  thousand  memories,  moreover,  flashed  on  his  mind 
that  bore  witness  to  their  veracity;  the  strange  dread 
witness  of  forgotten  trivialities,  from  long-perished  hours, 


598  TRIGOTRIN, 

which  arise  from  their  graves  in  the  past  to  bear  testi- 
mony that  kills  the  peace  of  the  present.  Memories  of 
sounds,  and  glances,  and  echoes  of  laughter  ;  of  a  cadence 
in  the  voice,  of  a  smile  on  the  lips.  Of  a  child's  innocent 
nonsense  among  the  wild  gourds  of  a  garden,  and  a 
woman's  airy  frivolities  on  the  glittering  stage  of  a  thea- 
ter. Of  a  girl's  gay  form  fluttering  over  the  clover  and 
seed-grasses  of  a  field,  and  an  actress's  radiant  figure 
floating  before  the  footlights.  Of  a  young  singer  who 
sang  like  the  goldfinch  swaying  high  on  a  broken  bough, 
and  of  a  great  singer  who  sang  like  the  mocking-bird, 
delighting  the  ears  of  monarchs  and  princes: — all  that 
likeness  in  unlikeness  whereof  the  dying  man  had  spoken 
in  his  cynical  truth  started  out  to  his  sight  in  witness 
that  could  not  be  denied,  or  disproved,  or  any  longer 
doubted. 

The  bread  that  he  had  thrown  upon  the  waters  in  pity 
for  the  stray  fledgling  bird  left  helplessly  to  drift  upon 
their  salt  sea-tide,  came  back  to  him,  aud  was  bitter  as 
ashes  on  his  lips. 

There  could  scarce  have  come  to  him  a  thing  deadlier 
than  this.  He  was  even  as  a  man  who,  gazing  on  the 
fair,  sweet,  gracious  beauty  of  a  woman  he  adores,  sees, 
beneath  it,  the  canker  of  a  mortal  and  accursed  disease, 
doomed,  soon  or  late,  to  make  it  hideous  in  the  sight  of 
men,  and  draw  it  downward  to  the  grave. 

He  had  no  hope.  Every  memory  that  returned  to  him 
was  fraught  with  testimony  of  the  truth  of  this  his- 
tory, whereby  his  enemy  had  recompensed  him  for  rescue 
from  the  thieves'  wild  justice.  Once  when  in  the  press 
of  the  populace  at  the  theater  of  Coriolis,  he  had  glanced, 
from  the  face  of  the  dazzling  mime  whom  the  public  ap- 
plauded, to  the  face  of  the  child  in  her  little  bright  ruddy 
hood  at  his  side.  A  certain  sense  of  resemblance  be- 
tween them — vague,  changeful,  intangible — had  stolen 
upon  him,  and  he  had  thrust  it  away  with  repugnance 
and  in  contempt.  The  face  of  the  woman  was  lovely 
indeed  ;  but  it  was  soulless  and  mindless  as  the  face  of  a 
waxen,  scentless,  glowing-hued  flower.  The  face  of  the 
child  was  careless  indeed;  but  there  was  a  soul  in  it,  a 
soul  dormant,  dreaming,  half  awake,  half  lost  in  laughter ; 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         599 

but  still  there, — in  the  great,  soft,  shadowy  eyes,  on  the 
breathless,  fragrant,  caressing  mouth.  And  be  had  chosen 
then  to  see  only  the  difference, — it  was  the  likeness  now 
that  recurred  to  him. 

And  was  that  likeness  only  of  feature  ? — only  of  such 
slight  surface-things  as  the  hue  of  the  hair,  and  the  arch 
of  the  lips,  and  the  tint  of  the  skin?  Was  there  none 
in  the  heart  and  the  thoughts,  in  the  passions  and  im- 
pulses ?  in  the  barbaric  worship  of  gold  and  color,  and 
sensuous  pomp,  and  arrogant  display?  in  the  cold  slight- 
ing scorn  for  all  ways  save  the  ways  of  pleasure  and 
power  ?  in  the  gay  merciless  mockery  of  all  love  that  bore 
not  its  bribes  of  silver  and  gold  ? 

The  leaven  of  those  women  who  had  turned  aside  from 
innocence,  and  honor,  and  obscurity,  to  force  themselves 
forth  into  the  affluence  of  enjoyment,  the  furnace  of  pas- 
sion, the  paradise  of  wealth,  was  in  her.  It  had  been  in 
her  from  her  earliest  hour,  when  she  had  broken  aside  the 
lily-leaves  in  eagerness  for  their  yellow  stamens  ;  it  had 
been,  unknown  to  him,  his  subtle  antagonist,  his  secret 
conqueror,  when  she  had  refused  to  dwell  with  him  be- 
cause he  dwelt  not  among  princes,  and  could  not  give  her 
the  gifts  that  her  ambitions  and  instincts  craved  so  blindly 
and  so  violently.  Their  desires,  their  impulses,  their  evil 
— the  evil  that  had  made  no  kiss  sweet  to  them  unless  a 
jewel  purchased  it,  no  flower  fair  to  them  unless  it  were 
the  poisonous  laurel  of  notoriety, — had  been  ever  in  her, 
his  foe,  his  rival,  his  betrayer,  driving  her  from  him  on 
the  spur  of  a  vague  discontent,  seducing  her  from  his 
arms  with  the  whispers  of  that  tempter  which  does  the 
chief  portion  of  Mephistophiles'  work, — the  tempter  of 
feminine  vanity  and  unrest. 

These  had  been  in  her,  as  there  had  also  been  the  poetic 
fancies  of  the  peasant-girl  who  had  made  her  friends 
from  the  robins  of  the  pine-forests  of  Lira,  and  the  loyal, 
lender,  generous  temper  of  the  sailor  of  the  Riviera,  These 
were  in  her  also.  And, — as  in  her  physical  loveliness, 
the  fair  hues,  and  laughing  mouth,  and  dazzling  graces  of 
her  mother  were  heightened  and  ennobled  by  the  dark 
lustrous  eyes,  lull  of  the  sleeping  lires  of  the  south,  that 
had  ouce  gazed  from  the  pain-worn,   sunburned  face  of 


600  TRICOTRIN, 

Bruno,  and  told  the  tale  of  his  desolated  life, — so  in  her 
moral  nature  the  higher  and  the  baser  instincts,  the  cru- 
elties and  the  nobilities,  the  wanton  weakness  and  the 
truthful  courage  of  these  conflicting  and  contrasted  tem- 
peraments abode,  ever  in  union  and  in  disunion,  forming 
the  anomalous  fluctuations  of  her  life.  The  haughty- 
blood  of  that  patrician  race  of  which  Coriolis  was  the 
illicit  offspring;  the  passionate,  gentle,  ignorant,  heroic 
soul  of  the  southern  mariner  ;  the  instinctive  poetry  of 
the  simple,  harmless  lives  passed  under  the  lonely  skies 
of  the  mountain  pine-woods;  the  ruthless  greeds,  the 
restless  aspirations,  the  thirsty  vanities  of  the  women 
who  had  forsaken  sinless  love  for  gilded  infamy; — all 
these  lived  in  her.  All  these  inspired  her  with  those 
gifts,  and  graces,  and  sins,  and  follies,  that  she  had  once 
believed  came  from  that  more  than  mortal  origin  on  which 
she  had  loved  to  muse  in  still  sweet  summer  nights  when 
her  childish  eyes  had  sought  beneath  broad  burdock- 
leaves,  and  in  dew-laden  chalices  of  flowers,  for  the  com- 
ing of  the  people  of  her  nation,  for  the  reign  of  the  fairies 
upon  earth. 

He  knew  it ;  and  there  was  no  hope  in  him,  as  he  went 
toward  the  dens  of  vice  and  misery  at  Chaumont :  yet 
his  chief  thought  still  was  of  her. 

If  ever  this  truth  came  to  her  she  would  cry  out  that 
it  would  have  been  better  that  she  should  have  been  left 
to  perish  in  the  blindness  and  unconsciousness  of  her  in- 
fancy than  have  lived  for  this  shame  to  bow  her  proud 
head  to  the  dust ! 

That  absolute  despair  which  paralyzes  the  courage,  the 
faith,  the  strength  of  a  man  when  he  beholds  his  holiest 
acts  change  into  his  foes,  and  all  his  efforts  as  of  no  avail 
against  the  force  of  a  cruel  mockery  of  accident,  came  on 
him  now,  and  broke  the  heroic  temper  in  him,  and  killed 
the  bright  and  clear  philosophies  which  had  withstood  all 
lighter  blows. 

"He  had  never  regretted,"  he  had  said  to  the  man  who 
died  yonder ;  and  he  had  spoken,  not  in  the  language  of 
a  sophist's  hyperbole,  but  in  the  language  of  pure, 
straight,  simple  truth.  He  had  never  regretted,  from 
the  hour  when  a  boy's  ardent  impulse  for  freedom  and 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  G01 

peace,  and  the  joy  of  becoming  his  own  law  and  his  own 
leader,  had  made  him  abandon  the  heritage  that  was  be- 
grudged him,  for  the  simple  birthright  of  liberty  that 
came  to  him  from  his  mother's  people.  Chance  had 
favored  him,  circumstance  had  befriended  him  ;  he  had 
cast  greatness  behind  him,  and  he  had  found  love ;  he 
had  flung  away  dignities,  and  he  had  lighted  on  laughter  ; 
he  had  refused  the  rich  savor  of  costly  banquets  since 
they  were  seasoned  with  gall,  and  he  had  discovered  that 
glad  contentment  which  gives  sweetness  to  a  cake  of 
meal,  and  brings  lotus-dreams  with  a  draught  of  spring- 
water.  He  had  owed  no  debt  to  any  man  ;  he  had  bound 
his  will  by  no  fetter ;  he  had  paid  no  slavery  to  custom  ; 
he  had  been  yoked  to  no  gilded  chain  of  possession;  he 
had  shaped  his  own  life,  and  had  rejoiced  in  it;  he  had 
steeped  it  in  the  poet's  idealism,  the  artist's  color,  the 
lover's  passion,  the  gipsy's  freedom,  the  scholar's  medita- 
tion, and  had  found  it  exceeding  fair. 

It  was  not  a  life  fitting  for  the  multitude  of  men,  but  it 
had  been  fitting  beyond  all  others  for  him.  Because  a 
million  of  field  sparrows,  and  street  sparrows,  and  reed 
sparrows  build,  and  eat,  and  breed,  and  multiply  in  their 
low-lying  nests,  asking  nothing  better  than  food  and  wool, 
and  all  the  small  attainments  and  contentions  of  their 
communities,  they  will  not  understand  that,  because  this 
is  good  and  sufficient  to  them,  it  would  be  captivity  and 
death  to  the  bold,  white-winged  sea-bird  that  finds  its  joys 
in  endless  shores  and  houndless  seas,  in  wild  west  winds 
and  sun-flaked  clouds,  in  rocky  heights  and  ocean  dawns, 
and  would  not  change  these  even  though  famine,  and 
peril,  and  tempest,  be  oftentimes  its  lot.  For  other  men 
he  left  the  city,  or  the  field,  or  the  duck-pool  of  the  spar- 
rows; for  himself  he  look  the  sea-life  of  the  gull :  and  ho 
had  never  regretted,  lie  had  spokm  the  truth  ;  never  even 
though  want,  and  conflict,  and  danger,  and  labor  had 
been  at  times  his  portion  ;  even  though  he  had  lived 
nameless  and  homeless  among  men.  His  life  had  been 
fail1  to  him,  infinitely  fair;  looking  backward  on  its  many- 
colored  years  he  would  no1  have  exchanged  it  for  any 
other,  and  he  would  not  if  he  could,  have  undone  the 
deed  of  his  youth. 

51 


602  TRICOTRIN, 

Repentance,  or  disquiet,  or  ambition  had  never  once 
moved  him  to  desire  the  things  that  he  had  forsaken,  to 
lament  the  act  of  his  childhood,  to  desire  to  return  to 
those  pleasant  places  from  which  he  had  issued  self-exiled 
forever.     He  had  never  regretted. 

It  was  only  now,  when  out  of  the  gentle  pity  which  he 
had  felt  for  a  stray  child,  his  deadliest  anguish  came, 
that  the  desolation  of  dead  hopes  chilled  his  veins ;  and 
that  he  thought  in  the  bitterness  of  his  soul,  "it  was  well 
said — call  no  life  happy  until  its  last  day  is  seen." 

The  early  evening  had  come  by  the  hour  he  reached 
Chaumont;  a  stormy,  crimson  close  of  a  midsummer  day, 
with  thunder-clouds  rolling,  unbroken,  over  the  city. 

"  Where  is  Mi  Minuux  ?"  he  asked  of  the  people,  giving 
them  the  password  of  their  community.  They  answered 
him  that  their  chief  was  there,  in  his  own  den  ;  a  lion 
whom  no  foe  durst  beard  in  his  lair,  a  ruler  whose  word 
was  as  omnipotent,  and  vengeance  as  terrible,  as  though 
in  lieu  of  his  rage  he  had  worn  purples. 

To  that  den  he  went  straightway. 

The  Patron,  heavy  and  spent  from  a  night-long  debauch 
to  which  a  great  robbery  of  alcohol  and  wine  had  given 
a  rare  power  of  furious  indulgence,  was  stretched  half 
asleep  on  a  pile  of  sacks ;  his  enormous  limbs  motionless 
like  a  gorged  hyena's,  his  naked  arms  knotted  above  his 
head,  his  bloodshot  eyes  half  closed.  His  cave  was  his 
audience-hall,  his  banqueting-room,  his  treasure-house, 
his  shambles,  his  sleeping-chamber,  his  hall  of  judgment, 
all  in  one.  Here  and  there  gleams  of  smelted  gold  or 
broken  jewels  glistened  out  of  the  straw  and  ashes  that 
strewed  the  ground ;  here  and  there  a  stain  of  blood 
darkened  the  bare  rocky  floor  ;  a  slaughtered  lamb  lay  in 
one  corner,  a  keg  of  wine  stood  half  emptied  in  another. 
Watching  him,  there  crouched,  ready  to  spring  up  in 
obedience  to  his  slightest  sign,  the  half-nude  form  of  the 
youngest  of  the  women  that  he  loved,  with  an  Eastern 
look  in  her  deep  dark  eyes,  and  a  string  of  gold  coins  on 
her  raven  hair,  and  a  jewel  hung  on  her  brown  bosom. 
She  was  a  greyhound  that  her  master's  whip  lashed  into 
abject  submission,  yet  round  whose  throat  he  would  lock 
a  gilded  collar. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  603 

He  sprang  to  his  feet  as  he  heard  a  strange  step ;  awake 
and  alert  on  the  instant  with  the  vigilance  of  one  who 
knows  that  his  whole  life  is  a  crime,  and  that  with  every 
moment  he  lives  free  he  robs  the  law  of  its  rightful  prey. 
As  he  saw  who  came  he  cast  aside  the  knife  that  he  had 
seized,  and  over  his  bloated  face  a  gleam,  that  was  a 
smile,  passed  for  the  instant.  He  raised  himself  almost 
on  his  elbow  from  his  bed  of  sacks  with  a  laugh. 

"  It  is  you  !  Do  you  come  to  beg  another  life  ?  I  will 
not  promise  you  to  let  the  next  off  so  easily." 

Tricotrin  uncovered  his  head  to  the  crouching  girl 
with  a  grave  courtesy,  that  made  her  eyes  dilate  in 
wonder.  She  was  a  tiling  that  was  alternately  beaten 
with  a  whip  and  loaded  with  the  fruits  of  theft ;  she 
knew  only  brutal  blows,  and  as  brutal  caresses. 

"  Do  not  belie  yourself,  Mi  Minoux,"  he  said,  quietly. 
"  Do  not  be  ashamed  o'f  the  one  better  action  of  your  life. 
No:  I  come  for  a  simple  thing — to  ask  you  if  you  have  among 
you,  as  I  have  heard,  a  woman  called  Rose  Leroux?" 

Mi  Minoux  gave  an  indolent  kick  of  his  foot  to  the 
wanton  beside  him. 

"  Think  for  me,  fool,"  he  said,  roughly.  "  Have  we 
tiiat  name  ?" 

"You  call  her  fool?"  said  Tricotrin.  "Well— truly 
she  is  one.  To  submit  to  your  brutalities  when  she 
could  steal  out  any  day  and  sell  your  life  to  the  law.  Of 
such  fools  such  men  as  you  find  many; — fools  who  love 
their  tyrant,  and  are  loyal,  though  their  life  is  a  hell." 

Mi  Minoux  stirred  uneasily.  If  any  other  living  being 
had  said  this  thing  to  him,  his  reply  would  have  been  to 
have  lifted  his  club  or  drawn  his  pistol  from  his  belt. 
Now,  he  felt  a  certain  reluctant  touch  of  shame. 

"Oh,  1  am  good  enough  to  her — in  my  way,"  he  mut- 
tered. "  You  would  not  leave  me,  Nera,  because  1  kick 
you  sometimes,  or  curse  you  a  little?" 

'•  Never!"  she  said,  timidly  and  softly. 

She  did.  indeed,  love  this  man,  whose  wooing  had 
been  a  union  of  violence  and  fraud,  and  whose  kiss  was 
commonly  followed  wit h  a  Mow. 

"Well — well!"  he  said,  hoarsely,  moved  despite  him- 
self.    "I  never  want  to  hurt  you;  you  know  that.     It  is 


604  TRICOTRrN, 

only — you  see,  Tricotrin,  it  seems  natural  to  beat  dogs 
and  women.  They  will  not  do  well  without.  If  they 
have  not  the  stick,  they  want  their  own  way.  Leroux, 
you  ask  me? — Leroux?  Yes;  we  have  her,  I  know. 
What  has  she  done  ?" 

"  I  wish  to  speak  with  her ;  that  is  all." 

"  You  do  not  want  to  give  her  up  to  the  tribunals  ?  " 

"  No,     I  do  not  want  to  do  so." 

"  It  must  be  for  something  bad  she  has  done,  that  you 
'ask  after  her  ?     The  brute  has  no  friends." 

"Poor  wretch!  Yes;  it  is  for  a  wrong  that  she  did 
once,  but  very  long  ago.  I  only  require  to  question  her; 
and  I  shall  be  glad  if  you  can  force  her  to  tell  me  only 
the  simplest  truth." 

"  It  is  a  hard  matter  to  get  them  to  tell  the  truth.  You 
see — it  is  so  much  easier  to  lie ;  and  they  all  get  in  the 
way  of  it.  But  I  could  order  her,  and  she  would  hardly 
disobey,  to  be  frank  with  you.  You  are  sure  it  is  nothing 
that  will  bring  one  into  trouble  ?" 

"  Nothing.     It  cannot  possibly  concern  you." 

"  Then  I  will  take  you  to  her.  It  will  do  me  no  harm 
to  stretch  myself;  I  am  as  sleepy  as  an  owl."  With 
many  curses  on  the  brandy  that  had  made  his  eyeballs  so 
hot  and  his  throat  so  parched,  he  shook  his  ragged  dress 
together  into  some  sort  of  order,  and  went  forth  from 
his  den  to  seek  the  lower  part  of  Chaumont,  where  the 
woman,  asked  for,  abode. 

Mi  Minoux  knew  all  who  came  into  this  hive  of  crime 
whereof  he  was  the  center. 

"  You  ask  what  Leroux  is  ?"  said  the  Patron,  as  they 
went  along.  "  She  is  a  dull,  uninventive  beast,  with  a 
tough  will  and  a  hard  courage,  but  a  stupid  head ;  a 
woman  that  robs  at  mid-day,  and  lies  drunk  on  cburch- 
steps,  and  is  never  two  months  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
police.  A  chorus-singer? — oh,  I  dare  say  she  was  once; 
all  the  brains  of  those  people  lie  in  their  lungs.  Up  yon- 
der— to  the  right  of  the  stair — where  the  red  shirt  hangs 
to  dry." 

Up  where  the  tattered  shirt  hung  on  an  iron  spout  that 
served  as  a  linen-pole,  was  a  wretched  black  den,  full  of 
squalor  and  filth  ;  the  recent  rains  had  beaten  through  the 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WATF  AND  STRAY.         605 

hole  that  served  as  window,  and  drenched  the  floor.  The 
only  seat  was  a  heap  of  rags;  there  was  some  water  in 
a  cracked  pitcher,  scores  of  mice  were  scampering'  to  and 
fro,  scores  of  spiders  wove  their  gray  webs  in  every  nook, 
a  toad  squatted  in  a  corner ;  blowing  on  some  sticks  to 
get  lire  was  a  disheveled,  scarce-clothed,  black-browed 
woman. 

"  Leroux,  he  wants  to  hear  something ;  tell  him  all  he 
wishes,"  said  Mi  Minoux,  in  their  own  tongue.  "This 
is  Tricotrin  ;  answer  him  as  you  would  answer  me,  with- 
out lies,  or  it  will  be  worse  for  you.  If  I  find  you  tell 
him  one  falsehood,  you  shall  have  a  bullet  down  your 
throat," 

The  woman  muttered  a  promise  of  obedience.  The 
Patron's  word  was  law  at  Chaumont.  She  stood  staring, 
with  her  black  eyes  lusterless  but  savage.  She  had  no 
apprehension;  she  was  in  the  lowest  deep;  there  was 
nothing  worse  to  come. 

Without  preface  he  asked  her  straightly,  when  Mi 
Minoux  had  left  them  : 

"  You  are  Rose  Leroux,  to  whom  the  child  of  Madelon 
Bruno  was  confided  ?" 

"  Ninie  spoke  of  that  to  me  this  winter,"  she  muttered, 
calling  the  Greek  by  his  name  in  that  quarter.  "  Ninie, 
whom  they  tried  to  burn  as  a  spy.  What  is  that  thing 
coming  up  for  now? — it  is  long  enough  ago!" 

"You  are  the  woman  who  took  the  child?  Answer 
me  that." 

"Yes :  I  took  the  child,"  she  assented,  sullenly,  mindful 
of  her  chiefs  injunction. 

"A nd  abandoned  her ?" 

"  I  left  it  in  the  wood;  that  was  nothing.  Somebody 
always  finds  them." 

"  Where  did  you  leave  her  ?" 

"In  a  knot  of  trees,  aside  from  habitations,' in  the 
Loire  valley.  I  have  forgol  what  village  it  was  near.  It 
was  distani  from  the  highroad  and  the  plain.  I  tied  the 
child  down,  so  thai  it  should  not  crawl  about  for  any- 
body to  notice  it  until  I  had  gol  away  some  leagues. 
That   was  nothing;  that  did  not  hurt  it."" 

The  sullen  self-extenuation  was  half-ashamedly,  half- 

51* 


606  TRICOTRIN, 

ferociously  urged, — pleaded  against  accusations  that  had 
not  been  made. 

"  What  was  your  motive  in  her  exposure?" 

"To  get  rid  of  it." 

"  Why  did  you  wish  to  be  rid  of  her  V 

"  I  wanted  to  get  off  to  the  west  with  all  the  money  I 
had  had  for  it.  I  could  not  be  burdened  with  the  little 
brute.  If  it  had  been  Gerant's  child,  it  would  have  been 
different;  I  would  have  done  well  for  it ;  but  he  would  not 
pay  me  more  for  this  thing  of  Jean  Bruno's  ;  and  I  would 
not  go  to  Coriolis.  I  hated  her — the  yellow-haired,  lily- 
skinned,  laughing  thing!  Gerant  had  told  me  she  cared 
for  the  child ;  and  I  thought  it  might  sting  her  to  think  it 
was  dead.  I  had  thought  of  that  some  time  before ;  but 
where  I  kept  it  the  woman  of  the  house  was  a  fool  over 
it,  and  would  have  made  an  outcry  if  it  had  been  missing. 
She  thought  I  was  miserably  poor ;  and  she  fed  the  child 
almost  for  nothing.  I  had  to  spend  none  of  the  money 
on  it.  Else  I  should  not  have  kept  it  a  whole  year.  It 
was  pretty,  very  pretty ;  I  remember  it.  It  had  great 
black  eyes  like  that  sailor — its  father  :  and  all  her  yellow 
silk  of  curls.  I  remember  it.  What  can  you  want  to 
ask  about  it  now?  this  is  a  score  years  ago,  all  I  tell  you. 
I  never  starved  it,  nor  beat  it ;  it  was  well  enough  with 
me.  And  as  for  leaving  it  in  that  wood, — it  was  warm 
weather,  and  I  knew  some  one  would  find  it ;  it  was 
reaping-time,  and  there  were  people  about.  What  have 
you  come  to  me  for  when  the  thing  is  so  old  ?" 

She  spoke  with  a  restless,  dogged,  smothered  dread 
and  impatience,  which,  but  for  the  command  of  Mi  Mi- 
noux,  would  have  found  vent  in  wild  ferocity  and  brutal 
defiance.  She  smote  one  of  her  bits  of  wood  upon  a 
mouse,  and  killed  it ;  it  was  a  relief  to  the  violence  in  her, 
which  she  dared  not  let  loose  on  her  questioner. 

He  stood  silent.  The  vague  hope  he  bad  cherished 
was  dead  in  him.  The  words  and  the  accent  of  the 
woman  bore  the  impress  of  truth.  He  could  doubt  no 
longer.     And  his  heart  was  sick  within  him. 

She  looked  at  him,  and  spoke  again,  in  irritation  at  his 
long  silence. 

"  What  is  there  to  tell  of  that  baby  ?    You  cannot  have 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WATF  AND   STRAY.  C>01 

come  here  for  nothing.  I  did  not  think  any  creature  knew 
its  name.  It  could  hardly  talk  when  I  left  it:  and  it 
called  itself  Viva — after  a  dog  that  it  liked.  It  lived,  I 
suppose ;  or  this  noise  would  not  be  made.  I  always 
thought  it  would  live  ;  it  was  a  child  that  always  laughed 
— laughed  all  day  long, — never  whimpered  and  whined. 
Those  children  always  fare  well;  they  are  born  with  sil- 
ver in  their  mouths.  That  is  why  they  smile.  What  do 
you  want  of  me  ?  I  have  done  things  much  worse  than 
that  since." 

He  roused  himself  from  his  silence,  and  resumed  his 
examination  of  her.  She  told  the  same  tale  in  all  points 
that  the  Greek  had  given,  more  fully,  and  with  many 
touches  that  proved  its  veracity.  There  was  no  .false- 
hood, no  contradiction,  in  the  narrative;  it  was  brief, 
strong,  naked  in  its  wickedness  ; — the  wickedness,  old  as 
the  world,  of  jealous  hatred,  and  penurious  greed,  inter- 
woven and  reacting  one  on  another,  and  bearing  their 
common  fruitage  in  crime.  She  felt  no  remorse,  and  but 
scant  shame.  To  herself  it  seemed  as  a  virtue  that  she 
had  not  drawn  a  knife  across  the  child's  throat,  or  held 
its  head  down  in  the  mill-stream.  All  things  are  com- 
parative; and,  by  comparison,  this  abstinence  was  mar- 
velous and  deserving  of  praise  in  her  sight. 

He  endeavored  vainly  to  shake  her  statements,  or  con- 
fuse her  memories.  She  was  speaking  the  truth,  and  he 
saw  it:— saw  that  all  hope  was  (lend;  and  that  for  the 
life  that  he  loved,  there  was  no  birthright  save  the  dis- 
honor of  Coriolis. 

"You  xx  Til  not  harm  me  for  this?"  said  the  woman, 
doggedly,  when  she  had  ended.  "I  have  told  you  the 
truth,  as  Mi  Minoux  hade  me;  you  will  not  go  and  use  it 
againsl  me?" 

lb'  sighed  in  weariness  and  sickness  of  heart  : 

"Poor  wretch!     Is  treachery  so  common  with  you? 

No;  you  arc  safe  with  me.     You  did  a  greal  crime, 

w  hose  roots  and  branches  stretch  where  you  oever  dream, 
— but  you  shall  have  no  chastisemenl  for  utterance  of  the 
truth." 

She  regarded  him  with  curious,  dull  wonder.  She  did 
not  understand,  hut  she  fell  vaguely  that  the  law  would 
not  be  summoned  to  deal  with  her. 


008  TRICOTRIN, 

"Does  the  child  live?"  she  asked,  abruptly. 

"Yes — the  child  lives." 

"And  it  is  well  with  her?" 

"  Very  well." 

She  bit  her  stick,  that  had  killed  the  mouse,  savagely 
with  her  strong  teeth. 

"Ah! — she  thrives;  she  has  Madelon's  blood  in  her. 
Look, — Madelon  drove  that  sailor  mad;  and  sent  her 
child  away  to  perish ;  and  fooled  Gerant,  and  cheated 
him  of  all  his  wealth,  to  make  her  triumphs ;  and  robbed 
her  lovers  in  a  day  of  more  than  I  robbed  from  the  streets 
in  a  twelvemonth;  and  all  she  does  prospers.  She  is 
called  Coriolis  :  she  is  rich  ;  she  eats,  and  drinks,  and 
laughs,  and  takes  her  pleasure  ;  she  is  wooed  by  princes, 
and  fingers  the  purses  of  kings.  She  thieves,  and  she 
cheats,  and  she  murders; — but  she  prospers.  And  we — 
we  go  to  the  galleys  !" 

And  she  slew  another  little  brown  mouse  with  her 
billet .  of  wood  ;  the  contrast  of  crime  proscribed,  and 
crime  rewarded,  was  bitter. 

What  made  the  difference? 

She  herself  had  been  handsome  in  the  time  of  her 
youth,  though  now  disfigured  by  drink  and  disease;  she 
had  been  willing  to  sin  in  any  fashion  that  came  to  her ; 
she  had  been  without  scruple,  without  mercy,  without  re- 
morse ;  she  could  not  lay  to  her  charge  one  fault  of  the 
weakness  of  virtue,  whereby  she  had  deserved  less  the 
successes  of  vice.  Why  then  had  life  buffeted,  and  pro- 
scribed, and  scourged,  and  starved,  and  imprisoned  her, 
while  it  had  lavished  all  fair  things  upon  her  rival? 

She  did  not  remember  that  she  had  ouce  had  one  fault 
from  which  Coriolis  had  ever  been  free : — with  all  her 
brute  nature  she  had  been  unwise  enough  to  love. 

She  had  loved  the  actor  Gerant  with  a  blind,  furious, 
once  generous,  once  unselfish,  passion,  that  had  borne  her 
to  wreck  and  ruin;  and  which,  when  it  had  been  cast 
aside  upon  itself,  had  made  her  savage,  and  dull,  and 
brutalized,  and  cunning. 

She  had  been  at  one  time  his  devoted  mistress.  The 
weakness  had  brought  its  vengeance.  She  dwelt  here  in 
squalor  and  horror,  in  ignominy,  in  starvation  :  it  was 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AXD   STRAY.  G09 

only  the  woman  who  had  never  loved  aught  save  herself 
who  lived  in  perpetual  ease,  perpetual  laughter,  perpetual 
delight. 

And  she  slew  the  little  creeping  mouse  in  the  violence 
of  her  envy.  When  life  has  become  unutterably  horrible, 
unutterably  irredeemable,  unutterably  hopeless,  it  finds 
its  only  luxury  in  cruelty. 

A  beggar  can  wield  the  same  terror  over  his,  chained 
dog  as  an  emperor  can  wield  over  his  fettered  nation; 
the  equality  in  dominion  has  its  sweetness  for  the  fallen. 

A  fox,  pursued  by  the  hounds,  once  turned  aside  as  it 
fled  for  its  life,  to  seize  a  barn-door  fowl  by  the  throat: — 
the  hunted  human  creature,  with  the  baying  of  the  law 
behind  it,  will  also  pause  in  its  flight  to  enjoy  the  sweet 
sense  of  power  that  lies  in  the  action  of  slaughter. 


CHAPTER    LXVII. 

Tfie  den  above  that  which  the  woman  Leroux  tenanted 
in  this  hive  of  criminality — honeycombed  with  innumer- 
able cells,  that  were  filled  with  wretched  famished  idle- 
ness, or  with  the  industry  that  only  labors  for  guilty 
ends— was  occupied  by  an  old,  feeble,  sickly  man',  who 
was  by  trade  a  forger  of  false  coin.  lie  was  a  timid 
creature,  who  trembled  if  a  leaf -blew  against  him;  he 
scarcely  dared  to  pass  his  portion  of  the  base  money  that 
he  had  worked;  ami  he  was  very  poor  and  miserable. 

It  had  not  always  been  thus  with  him:  there  had  been 
a  time  when  he  had  been  a  dramatic  author  and  musical 
composer  of  no  mean  merit  ;  when  he  had  heard  the 
sweel  music  of  public  applause;  when  the  fair  eyes  of 
is  had  smiled  on  him  ;  when  his  little,  slight,  airy, 
fantastic  pieces,  full  of  a  sparkling  mirth,  which  passed 
as  wit,  had  been  very  popular  in   Paris. 

There  had  been  a  time  when  the  world  had  held  for 
him  pleasure,  and   love,  and  ease,  and  years  of  bright 


CIO  TRICOTRIN, 

folly,  and  childlike  glee,  and  ignorant  extravagance ;  and, 
in  a  certain  sense  also,  the  charmed  delusions  of  fame. 

But  then,  on  that  time  had  followed  another,  when  the 
tastes  of  the  volatile  public  altered:  when  the  weather- 
cock of  popularity  no  longer  pointed  his  way  ;  when  the 
same  audience  that  had  applauded  with  so  much  enthu- 
siasm, hissed  with  equal  acerbity;  not  because  there  was 
change  or  was  fault  in  the  thing  that  he  gave  them,  but 
because  thev  had  tired  of  it  themselves. 

And  then  he,  being  weak  and  heart-broken,  and  ill 
made  to  do  combat  with  the  stern  foes  of  censure  and 
ridicule,  of  bankruptcy  and  ruin,  had  succumbed  to  his 
fate,  and  had  sunk  gradually  down,  step  by  step,  into 
wretchedness,  and  at  length  into  crime. 

He  never  ceased  to  abhor  the  evil  ways  to  which  he 
had  yoked  himself,  the  evil  comrade-ship  to  which  he  had 
become  bound.  He  was  never  anything  save  a  pitiful, 
trembling,  faint-hearted  servitor  of  sin.  He  had  been 
harmless,  generous,  and  of  innocent  though  inordinate 
vanity,  in  the  season  of  his  successes;  he  was  scarcely 
more  harmful  now,  though  the  degradations  of  poverty 
had  driven  him  into  the  acceptation  of  crime.  For  the 
rest,  the  world  had  forgotten  even  his  name  ;  none  re- 
membered it,  save  when  some  restless  young  tyro  of  the 
theaters  turned  over  a  repertory  of  old  theatrical  pieces ; 
and  he  would  have  killed  himself  if  he  had  only  had 
the  courage  to  inflict  the  one  final,  unknown,  dreaded 
pang. 

As  he  sat  now,  huddled  on  his  bed  of  straw,  and  shiver- 
ing, though  the  evening  was  sultry  and  full  of  storm,  he 
heard  the  voices  below  him.  A  rat  had  gnawed  a  hole 
through  one  of  the  beams  of  the  floor;  and  through  the 
chink  the  sounds  ascended  distinctly  to  his  ear.  An 
instinct,  that  was  the  remnant  of  his  earlier  and  higher 
life,  moved  him  to  plug  the  hole,  and  shut  out  the  sounds; 
but  as  he  was  about  to  thrust  a  piece  of  wood  in  it,  a 
word  caught  his  ear  that  made  him  pause,  and  listen 
eagerly.     The  word  was  Coriolis. 

He  had  been  at  the  height  of  his  own  renown  when 
the  yellow-haired  mistress  of  the  singer  Gerant  had  first 
appeared  to  the  world  of  Paris.    Her  first  effort  had  been 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         fill 

made  in  one  of  his  own  slender,  graceful,  burlesqued 
comic  operas.  He  remembered  the  nighl  so  well.  He 
had  the  name  of  Coriolis  interwoven  with  all  his  sweetest 
successes;  and  in  a  fond  feeble  fashion  he  had  loved  this 
gay  creature  from  the  far  southern  sea-shore,  who  had 
mocked  him,  dazzled  him,  and  made  him  ridiculous  in  her 
boudoir,  but  who,  on  the  stage,  bad  conceived  and  repre- 
sented to  such  perfection  his  own  fancies.  In  bis  way- 
he  had  a  tenderness  for  her  yet ;  though  she  still  basked 
in  the  sunlight,  and  he  had  sunk  into  nethermost  dark- 
ness. 

Moreover,  a  few  years  earlier,  ere  he  had  lent  himself 
to  the  forgeries  which  now  made  him  fearful  of  venturing 
out  in  the  daylight,  he  had  timidly  stolen  to  her  one  day, 
as  she  loitered  in  her  villa  gardens,  and  recalled  himself 
to  her  recollection,  and  begged  alms  of  her,  weeping  pite- 
ously  at  his  own  abasement  as  he  did  so. 

Coriolis,  who  would  be  very  generous  with  gold  not  her 
own,  and  liked  to  play  patronage,  had  been  good  to  him, 
and  given  him  the  contents  of  her  purse,  and  sent  her 
servants  to  him  with  choice  meats  and  wines;  and  lie  had 
never  forgotten  these  gifts.  lie  had  never  gone  to  her 
again,  for  some  touch  in  him  of  his  better  life  had  made 
him  shrink  from  trading  on  a  liberality  that  had  so  will- 
ingly befriended  him.  But  he  had  never  forgotten.  There- 
fore he  listened  eagerly,  setting  his  eyes  also  to  the  rat- 
hole,  and  peering  down  into  the  den  below. 

lie  recognized  Tricotrin  ;  and  he  heard  all  that  was 
spoken. 

And  he  remembered,  as  he  heard,  one  night  in  the  au- 
tumn of  a  year  that  had  long  died  oul  from  his  memory, — 
one  night,  when  he  had  been  full  as  poor,  but  not  as 
criminal  as  be  had  now  become,  and  could  move  as  he 
chose  among  his  fellow-men  at  liberty,  and  had  joined  the 
throng  of  a    ('ale    Chantant;    all    I  lie    old    inborn    love    of 

melody  thai  he  possessed  urging  him  to  spend  one  of  his 
few  copper-pieces  on  the  hearing  of  song.  Now,  his  own 
music  had  almost,  b]  thai   time,  ceased  to  lie  beard  in 

Paris;  it   hail   not   po  i   the  strength  thai  lives;  it 

had  caughl  the  crowds  for  awhile,  hut  had  speedily  died 

off  their    lips    and    their   ears.      Still,    here    and    there    a 


612  TFICOTRIN, 

chorus,  a  burden,  a  snatch  of  its  tones,  was  sung  by 
many  who  were  ignorant  of  their  author  ;  and  this  night 
they  had  been  sung  at  the  cafe. 

He  had  listened  to  them  with  the  tears  hot  in  his  eyes ; 
and  at  the  light,  buoyant  mirth  of  their  melodies,  he  had 
seen  a  child  near  him  laugh,  and  clap  her  hands,  and 
move  with  delight  and  ecstatic  sympathy. 

She  had  recalled  to  him  the  many  faces  that  he  had 
once  seen  reflect  his  harmonies  thus.  He  had  turned  to 
her  as  it  ended,  and  asked  her,  gently,  "  This  pleases  you?" 
She  had  answered,  "  Oh,  yes !  I  never  heard  lovelier 
music  I"  and  he  had  felt  grateful  to  her.  The  people  had 
begun  hissing  the  song  as  old  ;  and  clamoring  for  a  new 
favorite. 

He  had  noticed  the  child,  and  the  man  who  had  been 
with  her.  The  man  he  knew  by  sight  as  a  friend  of  the 
artists,  a  peripatetic  of  the  boulevards,  an  idol  of  the 
people;  and  he  had  asked  who  the  young  girl  was  that 
was  with  him.  "Oh,  that  is  only  Tricotrin's  Waif,"  had 
answered  the  painter  whom  he  had  questioned.  "A 
foundling,  I  think  they  say; — his  daughter  most  likely." 

The  memory  of  that  night  came  back  to  him  as  he 
leaned  over  the  rat-chink,  watching  and  listening.  With 
the  subtle  penetration  which  the  suspicions  and  the  expe- 
dients of  his  present  mode  of  life  had  developed  in  him, 
he  connected  his  remembrance  of  the  girl  who  had  then 
listened  to  his  music,  with  the  inquiries  which  he  now 
heard  asked. 

"That  Waif  of  his  was  the  child  of  Coriolis,"  he  said 
to  himself,  where  he  cowered  on  the  floor.  "  Else  why 
should  he  ask  this  of  Leroux  now  ?  She  is  well  in  the 
world — that  is  all  he  will  tell  to  this  woman.  It  is  well 
with  her  ;  she  lives  in  happiness  then,  in  greatness  even, 
perhaps,  who  can  say?  Would  Coriolis  feel  aught  at 
that  ? — aught  of  regret  or  rejoicing  ? — if  she  knew  ?" 

The  sound  of  Tricotrin's  footfall  as  it  passed  away 
down  the  crazy  stair;  the  sound  of  the  woman  voice  as 
it  raised  a  tempest  of  oaths  in  fierce  feud  with  her  neigh- 
bor; the  sound  of  the  sullen  heat-drops  of  the  coming 
tempest  beating  on  the  broken  roof;  the  sound  of  a  young 
child's  shrieks  as  some  one  beat  it  with  furious  blows  in 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  ('.13 

the  court  below; — all  these  came  on  his  ear  where  he  sat 
by  the  rat-hole,  huddled  in  his  rags,  and  thinking. 

"Would  it  be  any  service  to  tell  her  that  her  child 
lives?"  was  the  thought  which  revolved  to  and  fro  in  his 
feeble;  tired,  vacillating  mind.  And  the  hunger  of  his 
body,  and  the  extreme  wretchedness  of  his  estate,  made 
a  baser,  meaner,  lower  thought,  from  whose  coarseness 
and  selfishness  he  shrank,  intrude  itself,  and  twine  in  with 
the  first. 

It  was  : — telling  her,  would  he  he  likely,  or  unlikely,  to 
receive  some  gratitude,  some  gift,  some  [date  of  food, 
some  coin  of  gold  ? 


CHAPTER  LXVIII. 


A  myriad  of  lights  were  glittering  under  the  trees  and 
upon  the  waters,  in  the  place  where  the  sailor  of  Riviera 
had  lied,  as  from  a  devil,  from  the  face  of  the  woman 
who  had  dishonored  him. 

Gilded  gondolas  and  boats,  like  many-colored  shells, 
floated  over  the  litth;  lake.  Lanterns  of  every  hue  glowed 
and  beamed  under  the  branches,  and  at  the  prows  of  the 
miniature  vessels.  Music,  and  laughter,  and  soul;-,  and 
the  murmur  of  the  cascade  crossed  each  other  on  the 
stilly  niirht  air.  The  roll  of  carriages  sounded  ceaselessly 
through  the  darkness  of  the  avenues  beyond.  In  the 
houses  on  the  lake  there  were  crowds  of  gay  idlers,  and 
of  women  in  their  richest  appareling,  jesting,  eating, 
making  love,  in  the  coarse  and  witless  fashions  of  modern 
dissipation.  There  were  color,  blaze,  luxury,  extrava- 
gance, pleasure,  every  where ;  even  amid  the  deep,  green, 
quiet  woods,  where  ever  and  anon  there  broke  the  chorus 
of  a  song,  or  t  here  flashed  t  be  sparkle  of  a  lamp,  or  there 
glistened  in  a  break  of  moonlight  the  hues  of  a  woman's 
robi 

In  one  of  those  little  caiques,  with  Chinese  lanterns 
suspended  at  its  prow,  was   a  woman   who  leaned   over 

52 


6H  TRICOTRIN, 

the  cushions  of  the  boat's  side,  as  she  had  leaned  over 
the  balcony  of  her  mansion  to  watch  the  passage  of  the 
troops. 

A  glitter  of  green  and  silver  enfolded  her ;  there  were 
huge  gold  serpentine  coils  upon  her  arms  ;  there  was  a 
wondrous  bloom  of  art,  delicate  as  any  sea-shell's,  upon 
her  face  ;  she  was  smiling,  and  listening  to  a  lover,  in 
whose  hand  the  oar  rested  idly.  And  she  was  pondering 
how  little  or  how  much  he  would  be  likely  to  pour  into 
the  bottomless  pit  of  her  debts  ;  and  thinking  of  the  fla- 
vors of  new  sauces,  and  of  the  strange  old  wine  a  prince 
had  sent  to  her ;  and  of  an  oriental  burnous,  all  inter- 
woven with  pearls  and  turquoises,  that  an  oriental  am- 
bassador had  given  her  at  her  asking ;  and  of  a  torch-lit 
fete  wherewith  she  had  astonished  the  eyes  of  nobles  at 
her  villa  the  night  previous. 

For  these  were  the  things  for  which  she  had  fled  from 
Bruno  ;  these  were  the  things  that  to  her  made  the  para- 
dise of  life ;  these  were  the  things  which  to  her  filled  the 
whole  soul  and  sense  of  a  woman  with  never-ending, 
ever-renewing  delight. 

To  Ninette,  the  gardener's  wife,  it  was  the  fatness  of 
fowls,  the  plenteousness  of  bread,  the  ripe  abundance  of 
plums  and  of  gourds,  the  presence  of  many  gold  pieces 
in  the  earthen  pot  buried  under  the^apple-tree,  that  made 
the  measure  of  life's  perfect  peace.  To  Coriolis,  the 
actress,  it  was  the  worth  of  the  emeralds  on  her  arms,  the 
cost  of  the  yellow  wines  in  her  ice-pails,  the  gigantic  size 
of  the  mirrors  in  her  supper-room,  the  weight  and  worth 
of  her  lovers'  ability  to  bear  her  share  in  their  fortunes. 
To  Madame  de  Lira,  the  Duchess,  it  was  the  magnitude 
of  her  proud  estate,  the  supremacy  of  her  power  at  the 
courts  of  the  nations;  the  perfection  of  her  diamonds,, 
of  her  lace,  of  her  horses,  of  her  palaces ;  the  extent  of 
her  subjugation  of  all  the  coldest  and  haughtiest  that 
came  near  her  sway. 

But  it  was  the  objects  alone  that  differed  ;  the  passion 
in  all  was  the  same ;  the  one  dominant  feminine  passion 
to  possess,  to  surpass,  to  be  rich  in  the  possessions  of 
life,  to  be  content  with  the  sweetness  of  the  senses.  The 
passions  that  kill  their  own  souls,  and  make  them  kill 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAFF  AND   STRAY.  615 

the  souls  of  their  lovers  and  of  their  children — strangling1 
them  with  a  noose  of  satin,  stifling-  them  on  a  bed  of 
roses. 

The  boat  glided  across  the  lake  that  is  in  summer  so 
gay  with  its  plaything  freight,  and  in  winter  so  gay  with 
the  evolutions  of  silver-heeled  skaters ;  the  spherical 
Chinese  lanterns  glowed  rosily  through  the  gloom;  the 
answering  laughter  of  challenged  friends  came  mirthfully 
across  the  water  from  other  lamp-lit  vessels ;  the  little 
skiff  came  lightly  to  the  shore,  touched  by  acacia-branches. 
She  threw  aside  her  green  and  silver  covering,  and 
stepped  with  careless  feet  on  to  the  land,  and  went  up, 
still  with  laughter,  and  love- words,  and  malicious  jests, 
all  intermingled,  to  their  midnight  dinner  at  the  house 
beneath  the  trees. 

There  were  crowds  of  guests,  of  equipages,  of  men 
and  women  sauntering  to  and  fro.  It  was  midsummer; 
the  theaters  were  about  to  close;  foreigners  formed  the 
chief  part  of  the  throng;  but  there  were  still  thousands 
who  thought  nothing  so  well  became  those  balmy  night- 
hours  under  the  blue  starry  skies,  in  the  full  beauty  and 
fragrance  of  the  year,  as  colored  lanterns,  and  brandy, 
and  high-seasoned  dishes,  and  loud  laughter,  and  music 
taken  from  tin;  Taverns,  and  women  begotten  on  the  Wal- 
purgis-Nacht. 

Out  of  the  gay,  amorous,  motley  crowd,  a  young  man 
glided,  and  came  to  the  side  of  Coriolis,  and  murmured 
in  her  ear. 

She  left  her  own  group,  and  went  with  him  up  the 
staircase  and  into  a  little  chamber  looking  on  the  wooden 
balcony  id'  the  bouse:  a  chamber  all  gilding,  and  mirror. 
and  velvet,  and  color,  Idled  with  the  scent  of  burning 
perfumes. 

She  east  herself  down  on  one  of  the  couches,  ami 
folded  her  hands  on  its  carved  back,  and  looked  up  with 
hoi'  blue  innocent  eves. 

"What  is  i;  ';■•  she  asked. 

There  Inn!  been  love  once  betwixt  this  man  and  woman : 
"low,"  as  in  lack  of  better  language  that  is  called 
which  is,  on  1  he  one  side,  a  youth's  ambition  to  lie  named 
in  the  mouths  of  gossipers  with  one  of  the  loveliesl  and 


616  TRICOTRIN, 

most  notorious  women  of  her  day;  and  is,  on  the  other, 
an  adventuress's  amusement  in  entangling  and  despoiling 
the  boy  who  is,  for  the  hour,  as  a  gold-mine  to  her  pil- 
laging hands.  There  had  been  this  love  betwixt  them  ; 
but,  when  its  season  had  passed,  there  had  come  u either 
alienation  nor  distrust. 

Neither  had,  in  love,  ever  believed  the  other;  but  each 
bad  served  the  other,  love  having  passed,  with  as  much 
sincerity  as  was  possible  to  their  natures.  He  had  heen, 
indeed,  a  child  in  years  to  her,  but  she  had  found  him  no 
child  in  subtlety.  She  had  seen  that  it  was  best  to  be 
well  with  him,  a  pretty  snake,  that  had  learned  how  to 
sting  mortally  ere  he  had  reached  maturity.  He  had 
seen  that  this  woman,  without  principle,  or  conscience, 
or  weakness  of  any  sort,  save  the  weakness  of  her  own 
vanity,  could  serve  him  in  fashions  wherein  he  often 
needed  service.  They  had  been  friends  ever,  in  that  un- 
acknowledged bondage  to  each  other  which  the  knowl- 
edge of  mutual  sin  and  mutual  use  makes  binding  and 
inviolate  on  those  who  smile  at  oaths  and  laugh  at  loy- 
alty. 

Leaning  against  the  window,  he  answered  her  now  : 

"You  know  the  Duchess  de  Lira?" 

A  steel-like  glitter  came  into  the  blue  serenity  of  her 
watching  eyes. 

"  By  sight — yes." 

"  My  good  Coriolis! — you  only  can  know  duchesses  by 
sight.  The  gulf  is  so  wide  betwixt  your  practices  and 
theirs  !  You  seem  to  hate  her  by  that  look  ;  do  you,  and, 
if  so,  why?" 

"  I  hate  them  all  ? — wThy  ! — pooh  !  how  can  I  tell  ?  I 
hate  them — just  as  cats  hate  dogs — so  !  The  dog  goes 
grandly  past  as  if  no  cats  were  in  existence, — well !  the 
cat  spits  and  scratches  just  to  show  it  is  not  safe  to  ignore 
her,  even  though  he  may  be  a  dog,  legally  registered  and 
honored  by  men,  while  she  is  down  in  the  law  as  vermin, 
and  can  only  mouse  for  a  living!" 

"You  are  very  candid." 

Coriolis  laughed  again,  her  rich,  light-hearted,  con- 
temptuous laughter. 

" I  always  am.     I  do  not  mind  being  a  cat  at  all;  it  is 


TTTK  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  ft  17 

generally  well  with  cats.  They  get  the  cream,  and  the 
butter,  and  the  warm  fire,  and  the  soft  cushions,  if  they 
get  them  surreptitiously;  now  your  dog, — if  it  be  legal- 
ized, it  is  taxed  and  muzzled,  and  if  ir,  have  a  place  in  the 
laws,  it  lias  seldom  bones  in  its  platter!  As  tor  the 
'grandes  dames' — pshaw!  they  are  only  copies  of  us; 
they  copy  our  slang,  our  costume,  our  manners,  every 
one  of  our  amusements  !  One  always  scorns  a  replica/ 
And  now  and  then  they  give  one  a  look — ah! — a  look  in 
the  passages  of  the  opera,  in  the  crowd  of  the  carriage- 
drive,  the  dog's  look  at  the  cat,  see  you;  and  then  one 
could  kill  them!  As  for  this  do  Lira — this  daintiest  of 
duchesses  I— 1  have  hated  her  ever  since  she  was  first 
pointed  out  to  me  years  ago  at  the  theater.  She  looks  so 
insolent,  so  cold,  so  arrogantly  well-content!  The  other 
day  a  rose  fell  from  my  balcony  into  her  carriage — ouf ! 
she  cast  it  from  her  as  though  it  were  plague-stricken! 
She  shall  eat  of  that  rose  someway  ere  long;  and  it  shall 
be  death  to  her  I" 

A  look  of  cruel  meaning  passed  over  the  mirthful  clear 
radiance  of  her  seraphic  face,  changing  all  its  happy  in- 
difference, its  sea-shell  bloom.  It  was  scarcely  ever  that 
this  hitter  passion  disturbed  the  easy  sunny  tempera- 
ment natural  to  her.  but  she  had  the  feline  instincts  in 
her.  She  could  resent,  and  wait:,  and  deal  her  vengeance 
with  sure  aim. 

He  smiled. 

"You  have  studied  this  duchess  well,  il  \\ould  seem," 
he  said  to  her.     "  Do  you  see  no  likeness  in  her  ?" 

'   No." 

She  saw  none;  she  was  not  swift  to  combine  indica- 
tions; and  «he  had  that  curious  torpor  of  the  imaginative 
powers  which  appears  so  often  to  characterize  those  whose 
career  lies  in  the  embodimenl  on  the  stage  of  the  imagina- 
tions Of  ot  hers. 

"  Think  twice,"  he  urged,  softly. 

She  obeyed  him,  ruffling  her  pretty  yellow  hair  as  her 
habil  was  in   the  torment  of  thought,  and   beating   i 

lessly  with  her  fan  on  the  gilded  W I  of  her  sofa.      She 

did   nnt  see,' she  did  not  guess;  the  resemblance  which 
had  sufficed  lor  the  coarse  hatred  of  t  he  dairy  woman,  and 

52* 


618  TRICOTRIN, 

for  the  subtle  intuition  of  the  Athenian,  escaped  her. 
Coi'iolis  had  lived  without  thought,  and  she  had  little 
power  of  mental  conception 

"Think  twice,"  he  urged,  once  more,  "of  a  stray  bird 
that  once  escaped  you  and  me !" 

She  started. 

"  What  1  what !     The  child  Viva  !» 

"Yes— the  child  Viva!" 

"It  is  impossible  !  This  woman  is  an  aristocrat  by 
birth ! " 

"  By  marriage  only.  The  duchess  who  cast  out  your 
rose  from  her  carriage  is  the  foundling  who  befooled  and 
escaped  us  both  at  once." 

Coriolis  gazed  at  him  with  utter  unbelief. 

"  It  is  impossible,"  she  cried,  afresh;  "she  came  from 
north  Europe,  the  daughter  of  noble  people.  She  was  an 
orphan  in  her  infancy,  and  was  adopted  by  their  friend, 
the  old  dead  duchess — so  the  story  runs„as  I  have  heard; 
and  that  man — half-fool,  half-hermit — married  her " 

"Oh,  yes,  he  married  her.  I  do  not  deny  that.  She 
is  all  that  he  could  make  her,  and — she  has  forgotten  that 
she  was  ever  anything  else.  Nevertheless,  it  is  true. 
This  magnificent  Cleopatra  is  the  young  fool  that  fooled 
us.  How  have  I  learned  this  ? — never  mind  how,  at  first. 
When  I  saw  her,  I  knew  her ;  just  one  look  on  the  stairs, 
and  I  read  her  face,  and  she  mine.  We  have  met  with 
courtesy,  parted  with  compliment;  my  lady  is  almost  as 
fine  an  actress  as  you  1  But  I  know,  and  she  knows  that 
I  know.  Do  you  think  she  has  slept  in  peace  one  hour 
since  ?     I  do  not ! 

"I  should  have  only  suspicion  in  the  stead  of  certainty, 
save  for  one  false  step  of  hers.  It  is  this.  It  seems  a 
year  since  she  dismissed  a  steward  of  her  late  lord's  from 
his  rule  at  Lira.  He  had  been  trusted,  respected,  well 
treated  by  the  family  for  near  thirty  years,  but — he  dis- 
pleased miladi.  These  hereditary  sovereigns  are  so  used 
to  implicit  submission,  they  cannot  brook  disobedience  ! 
He  differed  with  her,  and  neglected  a  command;  she  gave 
him  his  dismissal — carelessly,  as  she  would  have  brushed 
off  a  fly  ! 

The  old  man  took  it  ill.     But  fair  spoiled  women 


<< 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         619 

never  heed  how  they  make  such  an  enemy.  People  I 
have,  who  are  skillful,  told  me  this  when  I  hade  them 
gather  all  histories  of  miladi's  victorious  reign.  The  old 
man  dwells  now  in  Paris  with  his  son,  a  jeweler.  I  have 
seen  him.  You  can  believe  how  little  love  he  bears  to 
this  new  mistress,  who  banished  him  from  a  thirty  years' 
well-feathered  nest  because  he  combated  one  out  of  her 
thousand  caprices. 

"  With  some  persuasion,  and  some  payment,  I  got  the 
truth  from  him.  lie  told  me,  when  I  asked  him  straight ly 
if  it  were  not  so,  that  she  was  what  I  thought.  There 
had  been  only  three  persons  of  the  whole  Lira  household 
who  had  known  whence  she  came — himself,  his  wife,  and 
one  of  their  sons,  who  was  chasseur  to  the  duchess.  All 
three  were  devoted  to  their  master,  and  would  have 
perished  rather  than  have  displeased  or  babbled  of  him. 
The  wife  and  son  both  died  some  years  since;  the  old 
man  only  lived,  to  be  subject  to  all  the  vagaries  of  his 
Dew  mistress's  will.  She  dismissed  him;  and  the  thorn 
rankled  in  him.  Miladi  was  wise  when  she  turned  him 
away  ;  those  servile  worms  never  turn  !  Well  I— you  see 
I  speak  on  no  fancy  ;  1  tell  you  a  fact.  This  woman  who 
gives  you  a  'dog's  look'  on  the  opera-stairs,  this  greal 
lady  who  flings  your  rose  into  the  dust,  this  duchess  who 
goes  to  stare  at  you  as  a  spectacle,  is  Trieotrin's  Waif  and 
Stray — is  the  baby  Viva,  who  has  proved  herself  wittier, 
wiser,  keener  in  the  strife  of  life;  than  you  1" 

Corioli.-  heard  him,  breathless,  and  with  her  hands  tight 
clinched.  The  treacherous,  murderous  glitter  in  her  for- 
get-me-not-hued  eyes  grew  colder  ami  more  brilliant  ;  the 
soft  curve.-  of  her  mouth  straightened  and  grew  hard  ;  the 
laughter  on  her  lips  was  merciless.  Scathing,  mocking 
words  of  hatred  rushed  to  her  utterance.  It  was  bitter 
a-  gail  to  her — this  thing  thai  lie  told. 

That  child  who  had  once  gazed  at  her  with  such  rapt 
admiration;  thai  little  bohemian  in  her  red  gipsy  hood, 
that  nameless  creature  that  she  had  played  with,  and 
dressed  up,  and  tossed  sweetmeats  to.  in  careless  patron- 

.  that  you Dg  fool  who  had  fallen  so  readily  into  her 
nets,  and  who  had  worshiped  her  as  some  divine  being, 
was  qow  this  haughty  woman,  this  superb  patrician,  this 


620  TRICOTRIN, 

leader  of  fashion,  who  gave  her  the  glances  that  kill,  who 
swept  past  her  as  though  naught  of  the  same  humanity 
could  be  in  tbem  ! 

"  What — what !"  she  cried,  aloud,  while  her  sweet  sil- 
very voice  became  harsh  and  dissonant.     "  What ! that 

beggar-child  a  great  duchess  ?  that  thing  of  hazard  a  court 
beauty?  that  golden-curled  bastard  a  lawgiver  of  fashion  ? 
It  is  not  true — it  cannot  be  true.  It  is  ridiculous  to  talk 
of  rank  in  the  same  breath  with  her  !  What !  a  creature 
that  a  vagabond  picked  up  on  the  highway,  lifted  on  high 
like  this  ?  A  baby  that  should  have  gone  to  the  found- 
ling houses,  to  the  public  charities,  a  Duchess  de  Lira? — 
a  little  wretch  that  should  have  been  reared  in  the  hospi- 
tals and  made  into  a  sempstress,  a  fruit-seller,  a  flower- 
girl  at  the  best,  turned  into  a  millionnaire,  a  lady-of-honor, 
a  glittering  princess  like  this!  Pshaw!  you  talk  fables. 
We  are  not  in  fairy-land,  to  see  such  transformations !" 

He  smiled,  and  waited  in  patience  till  the  tempest  had 
spent  itself. 

"Am  I  like  one  who  speaks  idly?"  he  said,  at  length. 
"  No :  what  I  say  now  is  true.  It  is  the  same  face  ; 
only,  what  was  Gretchen  then,  is  Cleopatra  now.  That 
is  all.  Transformation!  Is  there  any  transmuter  like 
the  magicians  of  wealth  and  ambition  ?  Down  at  Vil- 
liers,  a  woman — stupid,  heavy,  and  coarse  as  any  one  of 
the  cattle  she  tends — knew  her ;  knew  the  features  that 
failed  to  tell  you  their  story.  If  I  had  no  proof,  I  should 
not  be  less  sure  of  the  past  that  belongs  to  her.  It  is 
true,  however  much  you  may  doubt  it.  And  I  fail  to  see 
why  you  should  doubt.  Is  the  story  of  a  man's  infatua- 
tion, of  a  girl's  ascendency,  so  rare?  She  had  beauty, 
pride,  tact,  ambition, — these  have  kept  her  feet  sure  on 
the  giddiest  heights." 

"But  a  duchess! — a  duchess!  It  is  ridiculous — in- 
credible— intolerable!"  she  muttered,  with  something  of 
that  childish  petulance  with  which  she  ever  opposed  what 
displeased  her,  deepened  by  an  acrid  envy  and  hate  against 
this  life  that  had  once  been  in  her  hands  like  a  fluttering, 
unfledged,  caught  bird,  and  now  had  soared  to  such  vast 
heights  above  her.  "A  duchess  ! — that  little,  friendless, 
vanity-eaten,  ignorant,  superstitious,  insensate  fool,  who 


TEE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         621 

adored  me  first  as  an  angel  of  light,  and  then  thought  me 
a  fiend  out  of  hell !  What  !  You  tell  me  that  imperial 
woman;  who  carries  her  head  like  a  stag,  and  has  a  glance 
like  an  eagle's  ;  that  woman  who  sits  at  the  opera  covered 
with  jewels  like  an  empress  out  of  the  old  world  of  fable  ; 
that  woman  who  has  every  man  who  looks  on  her,  her 
lover;  and  has  palaces,  and  castles,  and  lands,  and  all 
that  her  soul  can  desire— is  the  child  that  I  robed  in  my 
laces,  that  you  sought  as  your  mistress,  that  lived  in  an 
attic  with  a  republican  vagabond,  that  asked  no  better  of 
heaven  than  to  tread  in  my  steps !" 

And  she  laughed  aloud,"  her  eyes  shining  like  the  steel 
of  a  sword. 

She  no  longer  disbelieved,  though  disbelief*was  on  her 

lips. 

She  had  ever  hated  the  child  who  had  been  tempted  by 
her,  with  the  hate  that  the  wrong-doer  ever  bears  to  the 
wronged*;  hated  her,  if  only  for  the  sudden  force,  and 
loathing,  and  perception  of  her  own  evil  life,  that  had 
broken  in  upon  Viva  at  the  last  hour  of  her  temptation, 
and  released  her  from  the  fatal  bewitchment  of  her  sor- 
ceress. 

Coriolis  had  supposed  that  swift  punishment  in  the 
shape  of  poverty,  and  privacy,  and  hardship,  and  heart- 
sickness  had  overtaken  the  venturesome  creature  that  had 
dared  to  defy  and  resist  her.  She  had  supposed  so— 
whenever  she  had  given  thought  to  the  matter:  audit 
was  like  iron  in  her  soul  to  believe  that  in  the  stead  of 
these,  all  gracious  things,  and  all  proud  glories,  had  fallen 
to  the  lot  of  this  life  in  whose  pollution  and  betrayal  she 
once  had  failed. 

"I  tell  you  this,"  he  said,  slowly,  in  answer.  "  Do  you 
imagine  it  is  so  welcome  to  me  thai  I  should  dream  it  out 
of  pure  desire  for  her  good  ?" 

"  You  told  me  she  was  dead,''  she  said,  with  a  certain 
ferocity  that  crossed  strangely  the  soft  mid  even  tran- 
quillity of  his  own  tones. 

"I  told  you  as  1  believed  :  they  said  so  about  Villi' 
it  was   the  popular  belief  in   all  the  southern   country  of 
the  Loire.     It  was  certain,  too,  that  she  had  disappeared 
from  her  home,  and  was  no  more  seen  by  the  side  of  that 


622  TRICOTRIN, 

man,  Tricotrin.  I  did  not  doubt  what  I  heard  ;  more- 
over, I  was  scarcely  in  the  country — I  lived  chiefly  at  the 
Austrian  court — I  was  soon  consoled.  I  soon  forgot  her 
existence,  although  I  did  not  forget " 

"That  you  would  have  your  vengeance  one  day  on 
the  man,  if  the  girl  had  perished,"  said  Coriolis,  with  a 
certain  impatience  of  his  discourse.  "No  !  we  forget  to 
love  very  rapidly  :  but  I  doubt  if  we  ever  forget  to  hate 
as  long  as  there  is  any  breath  in  us!  Then  you  believe 
that  when  she  fled  from  us,  and  disappeared  from  her 
garret,  she  went  in  all  honor  to  those  Lira  ?" 

"I  do  not  believe.  I  know,"  he  made  answer:  and 
recounted  to  her  all  that  the  steward  had  told  him,  which 
was  a  simpfe  history  enough,  and  essentially  truthful. 

Coriolis  heard  him,  stdl  impatiently;  beating  her  fan 
upon  the  gilding,  loosening  and  tightening  the  gold  coils 
on  her  wrists,  leaning  restlessly  out  over  the  wooden  rail 
of  the  gallery,  and  breaking  off  the  white  clematis  buds 
and  throwing  them  out  into  'the  moonlit  shadowy  gulf 
below. 

She  could  doubt  no  longer :  and  where  the  rays  of  a 
lamp  from  above  caught  her  face,  and  made  bright  the 
gleam  of  the  eyes  and  the  smile,  both  were  cruel  as  men 
never  are  cruel — cruel  with  the  cold,  slow,  wakeful,  death- 
less, unsparing  hate  of  a  woman. 

For  some  moments  when  he  had  ceased  to  speak  she 
was  silent ;  only  the  rapid  working  of  her  hand,  as  it 
tore  up  the  stars  of  the  clematis,  and  scattered  them  out 
on  to  the  darkness,  told  the  fret  and  the  rage  of  her  soul. 

Suddenly  she  flashed  her  glance  on  him. 

"Look  you!"  she  said,  between  her  set  teeth,  with  a 
violence  he  had  never  seen  wake  from  under  her  sunny 
indifference.  "I  might  have  been  greater  than  she,  once. 
Anatole  was  all  mine;  a  fool  who  adored  me,  and  who 
was  in  my  power,  and  who  would  have  wedded  me,  all 
prince  though  he  was,  because  I  know  so  much, — so 
much  that  he  feared  the  world  ever  should  know  !  And 
I  lost  all  that  because  I  was  the  wife  of  the  madman  who 
died  at  my  feet, — on  my  stage, — this  winter-time  only, 
while  this  duchess  of  yours  sat  on  high  and  looked  on ! 
I  had  as  much  beauty  as  she, — ah,  God,  there  was  no- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  023 

thing  on  earth  so  fair  as  I  was  ! — I  had  in  me  the  blood 
of  the  noblesse;  I  had  the  skill  that  holds  a  populace 
spell-bound ;  I  had  the  charm  that  drives  men  to  mad- 
ness. And  yet  this  bastard,  found  stray  in  a  thicket,  is 
throned  in  honor  because  she  had  the  wit  to  be  earlier 
faithless  than  I ! — this  nameless  thing  who  was  reared  on 
the  bread  of  an  old  peasant's  alms  passes  me  by  in  the 
passages  of  the  opera-house  with  the  cold  calm  of  the 
aristocrat  who  does  not  even  deign  to  perceive  that  such 
women  as  I  are  near,  though  the  same  hands  make  our 
robes,  the  same  workers  fashion  our  jew.els,  the  same 
purses  feed  our  fancies,  the  same  lips  caress  our  cheeks  !" 

In  the  passionate  utterance  of  the  words,  Coriolis  was 
transformed ;  she  was  for  one  solitary  moment  of  her 
actual  life  possessed  and  moved  by  the  emotions  which 
she  so  long  had  counterfeited  on  the  stage. 

Her  eye  gleamed,  her  mouth  trembled,  her  voice  rang, 
under  the  inspiration  of  hatred,  ami  envy,  and  of  a  vague 
shame  that  fought  against  her  life-long  repulsion  of  it; 
some  feeling  wakened  in  this  careless,  callous,  mindless 
thing,  some  inarticulate  pain  stirred  in  her  and  found 
voice. 

It  was  low,  it  was  venomous,  it  was  born  of  envy,  and 
bitterness,  and  many  an  evil  thing;  but  it  was  pain, — the 
first  that  Coriolis  had  ever  known,  save  that  which  had 
dully  smote  her  conscience  on  the  night  when  a  dead 
sailor  lay  in  the  house  by  the  theater  with  a  knot  of  sea- 
grasses  and  a  woman's  azure  ribbon  on  his  breast. 

He  who  heard  her  now  had  perception  of  this;  but  no 
pity.  He  mused  how  best  this  would  further  his  own 
desires. 

"Well,"  he  said,  slowly;  "well — if  you  have  this 
against  her,  you  can  repay  it  now."' 

<fHow  so'.'"  she  muttered,  restlessly,  breaking  down 
the  clematis  flowers.  "How  can  thai  ever  be?  She  is 
what  she  is  by  law.  you  say:  how  can  one  touch  her.  or 
despoil  her,  or  hurl  her  down  ?" 

lie  leaned  over  the  wooden  railing  by  her  side,  and 
looked  down  into  the  gray  soft  night  shadowbroken  with 
gleams  of  color  and  ray.--  of  light  where  the  people  moved 
below. 


624  TRICOTRIN, 

"You  can  do  none  of  these;  true.  Her  possessions, 
her  titles,  her  dignities  she  must  keep  all  her  life  through. 
But  you  can  do  almost  as  much  as  though  you  stripped 
her  of  these  ;  you  can  make  her  subject  to  the  world's 
contempt.  You  can  fling  her  story  to  the  hounds  of 
slander,  you  can  give  all  the  women  whom  she  has  rivaled 
a  poisoned  dagger  against  her  ;  you  can  leave  her  in  soli- 
tude among  her  splendor." 

Coriolis  gave  a  fierce  gesture  of  denial. 

"  If  we  leave  her  her  riches  and  her  titles,  we  leave  her 
a  herd  of  lovers,  a  crowd  of  friends !  Does  the  world  ever 
forsake  what  can  feast  it?" 

"  That  is  true.  Nevertheless,  you  can  deal  her  such 
bitterness  that  she  will  be  lonelier  in  her  eminence  than 
any  famished  beggar  that  has  ever  asked  her  alms.  She 
loves  at  last ; — she  is  again  about  to  wed  : — one  breath 
of  disgrace  cast  on  her,  and  the  man  she  worships  will  let 
her  die  rather  than  ever  trust  her  with  his  honor." 

Coriolis  looked  quickly  up:  her  eyes  caught  their  look 
from  him,  her  mouth  laughed  with  ruthless  ]oj}  her  breath 
came  eagerly. 

"Ah  !  that  is  well  put.     This  man  is ?" 

"Estmere." 

She  laughed  softly  still,  under  her  breath. 

"  I  see!  I  see  !  How  strange  it  is !  Yet  if  he  love  her 
will  he  care  ?  ■  Men  are  such  fools  !" 

"  For  her  story  ?*  No.  But  for  her  shame  he  will  leave 
her  forever." 

"  Her  shame  !    What  is  it  ?" 

His  smile  was  slow  and  very  full  of  meaning,  as  he 
auswered  her. 

"  Forgive  me  ;  but — can  we  not  say  she  was  once  be- 
neath your  roof?  you  see  ?" 

She  crushed  a  snowy  cluster  of  the  clematis  blossom 
violently  in  her  palm,  and  flung  it  forth  into  the  gloom, 
and  laughed  still, — with  her  teeth  hard  set,  and  a  warmth 
of  sudden  color  on  her  face. 

"I  see,"  she  murmured  back  to  him.  "Yes.  It  will 
serve — it  will  serve!  She  lies  in  the  hollow  of  your 
hands  ;  and — only  the  other  day,  I  thought  if  I  could  see 
her  mount  the  guillotine  1  For  she  threw  my  yellow  rose 
in  the  dust — in  the  dust  under  her  carriage- wheels!" 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         625 


CHAPTER  LXIX. 

As  the  light  silvery  robes  of  Coriolis  swept  through 
her  moonlit  garden  toward  dawn,  a  frail  tremulous  creat- 
ure, hiding  beneath  the  myrtles  and  hydrangeas,  stole 
forth  and  touched  her  timidly. 

"  Madelon — Madame — may  I  have  one  word  with 
you  ?" 

She  turned  and  gazed  at  him  in  surprise.  None  save 
those  who  had  known  her  in  her  earliest  years  ever  called 
her  by  that  name. 

"  It  is  you,  Fleurus  !  Hiding  there  like  a  thief!  What 
is  it  you  want  ?  money  ?" 

He  quivered  a  little.  The  time  had  been  when  his  aid 
and  his  heart  had  been  passionately  craved  by  the  young, 
unknown,  ambitious  mistress  of  the  actor  Gerant. 

"  I  am  no  better  than  a  thief,"  he  whispered.  "  Still,  I 
do  not  come  for  alms.  I  come  to  tell  you  something  that 
may  be  of  service.     For  the  sake  of  the  pasl — — " 

If  is  voice  broke  down.  Thai  past  was  so  sweet,  so 
irrevocable,  so  utterly  forgotten  by  the  world  !  She 
smiled,  and  carelessly  motioned  him  to  follow  her  through 
the  glass  doors  of  a  lighted  chamber  that  looked  on  the 
gardens. 

■•  Speak  quickly."  she  said,  casting  herself  on  a  couch. 

"  I  am  tired,  and  it  is  al si  daylight.     1  will  do  what  I 

can  for  you — short  of  reviving  your  little  operas!" 

lie  winced  under  the  contemptuous  laugh.  Those 
Blight,  airy,  sparkling,  world-forgotten  pieces  had   been 

the  stepping-stones  to  her  fame  ! 

"It  is  not  that,-"  he  .-aid,  hurriedly.  "It  is — do  you 
ever  think  of  your  child  ?" 

I  [er  eyes  opened  in  amaze. 

"  What  child  '.'"  she  muttered. 

"The  child  of  dean  Bruno." 

She  started  slightly,  and  her  face  clouded. 

53 


626  TRICOTRIN, 

"Fool!  what  do  you  talk  about  ?"  she  said,  with  im- 
patient contempt.     "A  child  dead  a  score  years  ago  !" 

"  She  is  not  dead " 

"  She  is.  What  are  you  driving  at? — I  do  not  under- 
stand— speak  out  plainly." 

"  I  do.     She  never  died.     She  lived  to  womanhood — 

she  lives  still " 

"  That  is  folly  !  What  impostor  has  cheated  you  into 
this  nonsense  ?  Why  do  you  bring  these  stupid  things 
up  ? — I  hate  them.     They  make  me  feel  old  !" 

A  certain  sense  of  remorse  stole  on  her.  She  had 
never  thought  of  this  child  twenty  times  in  as  many 
years ;  but  she  thought  of  it  now,  as  she  had  last  looked 
on  it,  asleep  in  its  boat-shaped  cradle,  with  a  plume  of 
sea-weed  in  one  hand,  and  its  fair  curls  tumbled  and  tossed 
in  the  summer  heat. 

The  wretched  Fleurus  was  frightened ;  he  had  hoped 
to  pleasure  her. 

"It  is  true,  indeed,"  he  murmured.  "I  thought  you 
might  wish  to  know.     And  all  is  so  well  with  her,  they 

say " 

"Who  say?"  she  said,  fiercely,  for  the  bitter  passions 
awakened  in  her  that  night  were  still  in  the  ascendant. 
"  You  are  a  fool,  and  have  been  told  some  ludicrous  lie 
to  chicane  you.  Who  has  been  talking  to  you  of  these 
by-gone  things ?     Answer  me!" 

And  he  told  her:  omitting  no  word  that  he  had  heard 
by  stealth  in  his  garret  at  Chaumont.  Coriolis  listened, 
with  a  tempestuous  shadow  on  her  face,  and  her  eyes  by 
turns  incredulous,  contemptuous,  startled,  angered,  and 
wondering.  She  felt  neither  joy  nor  sorrow ;  she  was 
only  moved  by  a  restless  sense  of  impatience  against 
these  things  of  her  long-buried  past,  that  would  thus 
arise  and  pursue  her,  and  force  her  to  think,  and  remem- 
ber, and,  in  a  vague  sense,  to  regret. 

In  a  vain,  gay,  childish  fashion  she  had  been  pleased 
with  her  infant's  beauty.  She  had  been  amused  to  put 
its  fair  face  and  limbs  in  contrast  with  the  brown  sun- 
burnt children  of  the  neighboring  cabins  ;  she  had  been 
willing  to  toy  with  it,  and  be  painted  with  it  as  Venus 
and  Love,  Mary  and  Christ,  by  traveling  painters.      But, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         G27 

in  a  seuse,  also,  she  had  bated  it  as  an  emblem  of  her 
bondage,  as  a  type  of  her  obscurity,  as  a  constant  re- 
minder of  the  passion  of  which  she  wag  so  unutterably 
impatient.  She  had  forsaken  it  willingly;  she  had  never 
thought  twice  of  its  fate.  She  listened  in  indifference, 
touched  with  anger,  and  with  scorn. 

"So!"  she  said,  with  a  laugh  that  was  bitter;  "the 
woman  lied  to  Gerant,  and  Ge rant  lied  to  me,  and  the 
child  was  left  to  grow  up  a  living  lie — if  your  talc  be 
true.  Well!  that  is  all  very  fitting  as  the  world  goes. 
She  ought  to  have  prospered.     Where  is  she  now  ?" 

"  Ah  !  that  is  more  than  I  can  tell.  The  man  did  not 
tell  that  to  Leroux." 

"  But  who  is  the  man  ?     You  saw  him  ?" 

"Yes,  I  saw  him.  He  is  a  bohemian.  The  people 
care  for  him.     They  call  him  Tricotrin." 

•  My  God!" 

The  cry  of  habit  broke  from  lips  which  ever  mocked  in 
their  sport  at  all  deity  and  all  faith.  She  rose  impetu- 
ously from  her  indolent  rest;  there  was  a  look  on  her 
face  thai  terrified  the  timid  soul  of  the  old  dramatist. 

"You  lie!"  she  cried,  with  that  ferocity  which  had 
only  arisen  in  her  that  night,  transforming  all  her  soft, 
gay  grace.  "  You  lie  !  XTou  are  sent  here  to  Mind  me 
with  this  story,  to  disarm  me  againsl  her,  to  seal  my  lips 
as  to  her  pasl  !  lie  lias  put  his  wretched  stray  thing  on 
high  among  princes ;  ami  because  I  know  and  can  ruin 
her,  he  semis  you  to  baffle  me,  ami  unnerve  me  with  this 
fable  about  Bruno's  child.  You  are  his  tool — h;s  mouth- 
piece—confess it!      This  is  a  wretched,  senseless,  hase- 

less  lie  ! " 

The  old  man  quailed  before  her ;  bewildered  and  wholly 
ignorant  of  her  meaning. 

"As  Heaven  is  my  witness,"  he  cried,  desperately,  "  I 
tell  you  the  simple  truth;  I  have  never  spoken  with  him 
in  all  my  life.  And  as  fur  her — I  know  nut  what  she  is; 
whether  princess  or  beggar.  It  seemed  bitter  to  him; 
and  only  freshly  learned  by  him.  1  tell  yon  ouly  that 
which  1  heard.  Why  do  yon  doubt,  only  because  I  have 
said  the  man's  name  '(  Yon  did  no1  Seem  to  doubl  while 
I  told  you.     You  seemed  to  know  thai   it  was  to  the 


628  TRICOTRIN, 

woman  Leroux  that  Gerant  gave  the  child  when  you  fled 
with  him." 

"  Silence!"  hissed  Coriolis.  "  What  if  I  knew — what 
if  I  knew  ?  I  thought  the  child  dead.  I  believed  the 
tale  that  they  told  me.  Why  have  you  stirred  my  belief? 
Why  have  you  brought  me  this  accursed  truth  now  ? 
Why  have  you  not  told  me  this  thing  either  sooner  or 
later  ?  She — she — that  woman  who  loathes  me,  that 
creature  I  hate,  is  the  child  that  I  bore,  and  suckled,  and 
held  to  sleep  in  my  bosom  !  The  daughter  of  Bruno  that 
cold  empress,  who  passes  me  by  in  the  height  of  a  great 
lady's  scorn !  Ah,  devil ! — beast ! — that  you  are  to  have 
told  me!  Out  of  my  sight — out  of  my  house!  or  I  will 
give  your  body  to  the  tribunals,  and  your  soul  to  hell,  if 
a  hell  there  be !  Off — do  you  hear  me  ?  My  child — 
mine !  Great  Heaven,  if  only  you  had  held  your  peace 
for  one  day  later  !" 

The  miserable  Fleurus,  gathering  his  rags  about  him, 
gazed  at  her  trembling  still,  but  with  a  dignity  in  his 
look,  a  passionless  rebuke  in  his  eyes. 

"  I  might  have  known  it,"  he  said,  slowly.  "  The 
woman  who  dishonors  her  husband,  forsakes  her  lovers, 
and  forgets  her  friends,  can  have  nothing  of  womanhood 
left  in  her  save  its  passions  and  its  cruelties.  I  have  told 
you  the  truth  ;  seek  Leroux  if  you  doubt." 

And  without  another  word  he  turned  and  passed 
away. 

When  the  morning  came,  a  dead  body  was  found  float- 
ing in  the  river  above  Surennes,  in  which  none  of  those 
who  saw  it  recognized  the  man  whose  melodies  once  had 
echoed  from  all  the  laughing  crowds  of  Paris. 

Coriolis  stood  motionless  where  he  had  left  her  ;  she 
had  no  memory  of  him,  she  was  paralyzed  by  the  truth 
which  had  come  to  her  from  his  lips.  She  strove  to  doubt, 
but  she  could  not.  Truth  for  once  was  stronger  than  this 
fair  liar,  whose  art  it  had  been  through  so  many  years  to 
breathe  life,  and  substance,  and  power,  into  the  falsehoods 
of  fictitious  woes,  fictitious  joys,  fictitious  passions. 

That  vague  horror  which  had  moved  her  when  her 
husband  had  fallen  lifeless  at  her  feet,  returned  on  her 
now.     She  did  not  feel  remorse,  nor  regret,  nor  yearning, 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         G29 

nor  shame.  But  she  felt  fcar, — a  shapeless  and  nameless 
fear, — a  fear  of  her  own  sins. 

In  her  lighted  chamber,  in  her  festal  robes,  in  all  the 
gay  costly  glitter  of  her  summer-night's  appareling,  she 
stood  cold,  numb,  stricken — appalled  by  the  specters  of 
her  past. 

There  was  not  in  her  tenderness,  or  pity,  or  repent- 
ance. There  had  been  no  place  for  them  in  the  supreme 
egotisms  of  her  youth  ;  there  could  be  no  place  for  them 
in  the  seared  sensualities  of  her  maturity.  She  had  never 
loved  aught  save  herself.  Husband,  or  lover,  or  child, 
had  never  been  more  to  her  than  the  flower  worn  in  her 
bosom  one  day,  to  be  tossed  aside  unremembered  the  next. 
She  hated  with  deadliest  hate  the  woman  who  bad  passed 
by  her  with  that  cold  disdain,  who  had  thrown  her  rose 
into  the  dust  of  the  street  with  that  gesture  of  loathing 
aversion  : — hated  her  but  the  more  because  the  tie  of  this 
close  union  was  between  them,  because  the  blood  of 
Bruno  flushed  those  scornful  lips,  because  those  eyes  that 
had  swept  over  her  in  that  chill  scorn  were  eyes  which 
once  had  smiled  in  hers  the  dreaming  smile  of  infancy. 

She  hated  her  but  the  more;  she  had  cried  nut  in  her 
fury  against  the  accident  which  had  revealed  this  truth 
to  her  ere  her  vengeance  had  struck  its  blow;  she  had  no 
mercy  in  her  heart,  no  yearning  for  the  pardon  of  the 
creature  she  had  wronged, — only  hate,  hate — the  bitter- 
ness of  hate,  for  the  little  child  she  had  forsaken  when  it 
had  been  sleeping  in  the  hot  summer  noon  down  by  the 
southern  shore,  as  for  the  superb  patrician  who  had  smit- 
ten her  with  the  pang  of  dishonor  by  a  look.  Yet  there 
was  that  in  the  horror  of  t  his, — their  mutual  fate, — which 
daunted  and  terrified  even  her  hard,  light,  wanton  nature. 
There  was  that  in  this  destiny  which  brought  her  face  to 

face  with  the  guilt  of  her  earliest  youth,  thai  froze  the  life 
even  in  this  frivolous,  inconsistent,  mindless,  merciless 
courtesan. 

In  this  very  chamber  she  had  spread  her  nets  fur  the 
unwariness  of  innocence,  and  tempted  the  guileless  faith 

that  .-aw  in  her  such  divinity,  and  BOUghl  to  draw  down 
to  destruction  this  soilless  life  that  had  sprung  from  her 

53* 


630  TRICOTRIN, 

own,  as  the  purity  of  the  lotus  springs  from  the  corrup- 
tion of  the  river. 

She  had  been  the  temptress  of  her  daughter's  soul. 

And  there  was  that  in  the  unnatural  horror  of  her  sin 
which  overcame  her,  and  was  stronger  than  all  her  levity 
and  all  her  wit,  and  cowed  her  with  a  ghastly  sense  of 
crime  that  made  her  crouch  as  beaten  hounds  crouch  to 
the  lash.  She  had  no  fear  of  chastisement,  no  fear  of  a 
future  life,  no  fear  of  man  or  God ;  but  this  at  length  she 
feared, — the  infamy  of  her  past. 

Suddenly  she  started,  and  looked  up  at  a  clock  above 
her  ;  it  was  not  yet  dawn. 

"There  may  be  time — it  is  a  chance,"  she  murmured, 
and  she  threw  her  cashmeres  over  her,  and  bade  them 
bring  forth  her  night-horses  once  more,  and  drive  back 
whence  she  had  come. 

There  was  scarce  a  league  betwixt  her  gardens  and 
the  park-gates  of  Boulogne.  They  took  her  swiftly  as 
the  winds.  In  the  house  by  the  lake  there  were  still 
liglits,  and  music,  and  noise,  and  carriages  rolling  away 
in  the  gray  of  the  breaking  morning.  The  last  embers 
of  its  revelries  still  glowed. 

She  alighted  and  moved  toward  it,  her  eyes  glancing 
hither  and  thither;  a  group  of  men  and  women,  wild 
with  hot  wines  and  mad  vice,  reeled  out  in  the  soft 
shadows,  chanting  boisterously  a  chorus  of  a  new  opera: 
she  saw  among  these  rioters  the  one  whom  she  needed, 
and  went  among  them  and  drew  him  away.  He  was 
not  drunk  like  his  companions;  he  understood  and  obeyed 
her.  He  went  passively  where  she  led, — into  solitude, 
under  the  trees  by  the  lake.  They  were  as  utterly  alone 
a«  though  they  had  stood  in  the  heart  of  a  western  forest. 
A  wall  of  green  enshrouded  them,  the  still  water  lay  at 
their  feet;  the  only  sound  of  the  life  that  was  around 
them  was  the  sound  of  the  rioters'  chorus  growing  fainter 
as  they  passed  farther  away. 

"  What  is  it  ?  Why  are  you  come  back  ?"  he  asked, 
hurriedly,  noticing  the  strange  colorless  intensity  upon 
this  face  that  had  never  kuown  grief,  nor  shade,  nor 
thoughtfulness. 

Her  hands  clinched  on  his  arm. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         G31 

"We  must  lot  her  be  !"  she  said,  sullenly.  "We  must 
leave  her  to  her  honors  and  glories  ;  we  cannot  touch 
her — we  cannot. " 

He  looked  at  her  iu  amaze. 

"  And  why  not  ?     A  woman's  vacillation  in  yon  ?" 

She  laughed  ;  and  the  laugh  was  as  mirthless  as  the 
dreary  dull  mirth  of  the  singers. 

"We  cannot!"  she  echoed  ;  and  there  was  an  accent 
in  the  word  that  told  him  the  renunciation  was  very 
bitter  to  her,  wrung  from  some  other  power  in  her  than 
her  will  or  her  pity.  "  We  have  wronged  her  enough — 
you  and  I.     We  must  let  her  be." 

He  gazed  at  her,  in  incredulous  scorn. 

"  Coriolis ! — are  you  mad  ?  An  after-thought  of  re- 
morse from  you!" 

"Pshaw!"  she  said,  fiercely,  in  her  shut  teeth.  "Re- 
morse? Who  talks  of  remorse?  I  am  not  a  fool.  There 
is  nothing  to  repent  of ; — I  have  enjoyed,  I  have  always 
enjoyed.  I  would  not  change  any  of  it  if  I  could.  It 
has  been  sweet  enough  all  these  years.  Remorse!  you 
prate  like  a  poet !  There  is  none  in  me.  But  we  must 
leave  her  alone,  I  tell  you.  Listen,  listen: — she  is  the 
child  of  Bruno  1" 

"Of  Brunol" 

He  repeated  the  name  without  comprehension.  In  his 
world  the  past  of  Coriolis  was  scarcely  known.  She  had 
abandoned  some  husband  for  Geranl  ;  she  had  come  from 
obscurity;  she  had  been  once  the  wife  of  the  mad  fisher- 
man who  had  died  on  her  stage;  this  he  knew,  but  in- 
differently, and  with  indifference.  What  to  him  or  the 
world  was  the  early  life  of  a  woman  who,  having  none 
who  cared  for  her  future,  had  none  who  asked  of  her 
past  ? 

"Well!  do  von  not  knownow?"  she  muttered  through 
her  teeth  that   were  -till  shut.      "I  was  his  wile! " 

lie  started  from  her  side  as  the  lighl  broke  on  1dm, 
and  stood  gazing  at  her  by  the  clear  rays  of  the  morning 
stars.  CoM  and  cruel  though  his  nature  was,  it  wa-  a 
shock  thai  went  home  to  him. 

■•  Ynii  are  her  mother!"  he  .-aid.  breathlessly,  while 
his    voice    was    drowned    in    the    drunken    song    of   the 


632  TRICOTRIN, 

revelers  that  came  to  them  through  the  depth  of  the 
trees. 

She  laughed,  that  laugh  which  made  even  him  shriuk 
and  feel  a  sense  of  fear.  Not  because  there  was  in  it 
any  great  grief,  or  any  sort  of  despair, — these  were  not 
possible  to  her, — but  because  it  was  so  utterly  without 
these;  so  entirely  the  laugh  that  rang  over  her  wine,  her 
wit,  her  lovers'  flatteries. 

"  Her  mother — yes!  It  makes  one  feel  old.  That  sea- 
cabin  down  in  the  south,  so  dark,  and  narrow,  and 
wretched, — ah !  it  was  all  very  well  for  an  actress's  nest, 
you  think,  but  unfit  for  the  birthplace  of  that  great 
duchess!  I  can  smell  its  salt  scent;  I  can  see  its  nets 
and  its  creels;  I  can  remember  its  steep  leaning  roof, 
and  its  path  cut  in  the  rock,  and  the  eternal  sough  of  the 
waves  down  below.  Ah,  God,  how  I  hated  them  all! 
He  was  her  father — Bruno.  She  has  his  great,  dark, 
dreaming  eyes.  I  ought  to  have  known  them  when  they 
looked  at  me  first ! " 

"  But — great  Heaven ! — how  have  you  learned  this  ?  I 
cannot  comprehend " 

She  told  him.  He  heard  in  silence,  as  she  had  listened 
to  Fleurus. 

"There  is  no  doubt,  then!"  he  said,  at  length,  with 
lingering  doubt  in  his  accent. 

"No  doubt!"  she  said,  as  she  stood  looking  straight  at 
the  still  starlit  water,  with  that  curious  look  of  scorn  and 
of  pain,  of  passion  and  of  levity,  on  her  face.  "  It  is  the 
daughter  of  Bruno  that  gave  me  that  look  in  the  opera! 
Things  are  strange  ?  When  I  first  saw  her  face  in  the 
gray  dawn,  on  the  day  of  her  birth,  I  did  not  think  ; — • 
pshaw !  if  women  ever  did  think  of  their  children's  future, 
they  would  strangle  them  the  same  hour  that  they  are 
born !  I  left  her — oh,  yes  !  She  was  his  child,  and  I 
was  so  weary  of  him  !  So  it  comes  back,  you  see — things 
do.  I  do  not  hate  her  less ;  I  think  I  hate  her  more. 
She  is  on  such  heights  ;  she  is  so  cold,  so  proud,  so  pure, 
so  great — and  she  shudders  when  a  rose  that  has  touched 
my  hand  touches  hers  !" 

'When  she  had  sunk  down  on  a  bench  by  the  lake,  she 
gazed  fixedly  at  the  gleam  on  the  water ;  forgetful  of  her 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         633 

companion.  Some  sense  of  the  dreary  unnatural  horror 
of  this  destiny  that  had  thus  enfolded  these  women  held 
him  silent. 

The  chorus  of  the  rioters  had  ended,  the  lights  were 
out  in  the  pleasure-places,  there  was  no  sound  save  the 
sighing  of  the  trees,  the  trembling  of  the  wind  upon  the 
water. 

"  I  hate  her  more,"  she  muttered.  "  That  creature  is 
mine,  and  yet  scorns  me  I  I  hate  her  more.  But  I  can- 
not hurt  her.  I  dare  not.  She  must  never  know  what 
I  know — never.  She  was  in  the  theater  that  night  when 
he  died ;  she  was  laughing,  and  covered  with  diamonds. 
God  1  how  strangely  things  work  1" 

Her  voice  fell  again  ;  he  said  nothing.  A  sense  of 
terror  oppressed  him  at  the  ghastly  fate  which  thus  had 
brought,  in  her  utter  unconsciousness,  the  daughter  of 
both  to  be  witness  of  the  death  of  the  one,  of  the  shame 
of  the  other;  yet  a  sense  of  exultation  moved  him  also 
at  the  added  vengeance  given  to  his  hands. 

"  You  will  keep  this  secret?"  she  said,  fiercely,  as  she 
suddenly  looked  up.  "I  have  many  of  yours  in  my  keep- 
ing!    Answer  me:  you  will  leave  her  in  peace — now?" 

lie  made  no  answer. 

"  You  will  leave  her  in  peace;  ?"  she  said,  again.  "  We 
owe  her  that — you  and  I.  How  we  strove  to  net  her, 
and  chain  her,  and  drag  her  down  to  our  depths !  And 
she  was  mine  all  that  while  !  Is  there  really  a  devil,  I 
wonder?  You  will  let  her  be — now?  Answer  me — \ou 
will  let  ber  be?" 

The  slow,  soft  smile  she  knew  so  well  stole  over  his 
face. 

"Coriolis: — if  you  have  your  daughter's  honor  to  keep, 
I  have  inv  lather's  honor  to  save." 

And  almost  ere  the  words  were  breathed,  ho  had 
glided  quickly  from  her,  and  was  losl  in  the  blackness  of 
the  woods. 

She  did  not  stir,  she  did  not  cry  out;  she  sal  still, 
with  a  scared  look  in  her  eyes.     For  the  first  time  in  all 

her  many  seasons  of  success,  8be  had  been  deceived.  Ber 
seen!  was  his,  to  deal  with  as  he  would.  She  had  only 
brought   to    his   hand   the    poison   wherewith    he    could 


634  TRIC0TR1N, 

make  mortal  the  dagger-thrust  he  already  was  free  to 
deal! 

"Oh,  fool — fool — fool!"  she  said  in  her  soul.  "When 
did  you  ever  know  him  spare  !" 

An  hour  earlier,  she  had  mourned  that  her  vengeance 
was  stricken  from  her  grasp ;  now  a  sickly  horror  of  what 
she  had  done  possessed  her.  Husband  and  child — had 
she  not  wronged  these  both  enough  already? 

The  gloom  of  the  trees  inclosed  her ;  the  wind  sighed 
wearily  over  the  water ;  the  stars  faded,  and  the  dawn 
came.  AVhen  the  morning  broke,  Coriolis  still  sat  there, 
with  her  eyes  still  fastened  on  the  stillness  of  the  pool, 
aud  the  red  flush  from  the  east  tinging  as  with  blood  the 
opals  in  her  bosom. 

She  had  not  remorse  ;  she  had  not  pity ;  she  had  not 
grief;  but  she  had  fear — fear  of  the  dead  sins  of  her  dead 
years,  that  broke  from  their  graves,  and  came  and  faced 
her  here. 


CHAPTER  LXX. 


That  night  there  were  tumult  and  tempest  in  Paris. 
Though  the  jests  passed,  and  the  jewels  glittered,  and  the 
buffoonery  rioted,  and  the  equipages  rolled  in  all  her  light 
places  of  pleasure,  none  the  less  in  the  dark  lairs  of  want, 
and  of  woe,  of  restless  thought,  aud  of  fretting  passions, 
was  the  lust  of  revolution  making  keen  the  eyes  of  men, 
and  heating  their  blood  as  flame. 

Children  glowing  with  the  stories  of  Hellas;  youths 
burning  with  youth's  noble  madness  ;  men  lashed  to  fury 
and  blindness  by  some  friend  or  some  brother's  prison- 
agonies  ;  students  sick  with  the  dire  disease  of  the  old 
world's  endless  corruption  ;  these  agaiu,  as  times  count- 
less before,  were  eating  their  hearts  out  in  weariness,  and 
feeling  helplessly  in  the  darkness  for  truth,  and  countiug 
no  possible  wrong  in  the  future  could  be  so  great  as  the 
wrong  of  the  present,  aud  willing  to  cast  their  lives  in 
the  dust  under  the  wheels  of  the  cannon,  if  only  from  out 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  035 

of  their  death  deliverance  for  their  people  might  come. 
And  again,  as  times  countless  before,  these — the  world's 
divine  madmen — were  foiled,  and  spurred  on,  and  be- 
guiled, by  the  brutes  of  sleek  tongue  and  strong  sinew, 
who  desired  to  light  the  torches  of  freedom,  only  that 
they  might  toss  them  into  the  stores  of  the  rich,  and  who 
crazed  with  their  lips  for  the  seizure  of  tyrants  because 
in  their  hearts  they  were  thirsting  for  the  seizure  of 
treasuries  and  granaries 

It  was  the  story,  so  old  and  so  weary ;  the  story  that 
would  break  the  strength  and  the  spirits  of  men  if  they 
paused  too  long  to  muse  over  it;  the  story  of  high 
thoughts,  and  pure  dreams,  and  impossible  hopes,  fused 
in  with  base  greed,  and  base  cant,  and  base  envy ;  the 
story  of  idealic  ambitions,  soilless  as  snow  on  the  mount- 
ains, finding  no  better  comrade  and  issue  than  the  char- 
latan's screech  to  the  mob,  and  the  demagogue's  rage 
against  power.  The  eternal  story,  without  an  end — 
young  as  the  days  of  Mentana,  old  as  the  Hellenic  ages. 

"There  will  lie  work  to-morrow,"  said  Mi  Minoux, 
showing  his  great  wolfish  teeth  with  a  laugh  of  grim  joy, 
as  he  passed  down,  through  the  evening  shadows,  from 
the  den  where  Rose  Leroux  dwelt. 

"Work?"  Tricotrin  echoed,  wearily,  not  thinking  at 
that  hour  of  his  meaning. 

The  Patron  touched  the  knife  that  hung  at  his  waist- 
band. 

"  They  say  the  students  are  rising  !"  he  said,  with  in- 
difference as  to  who  mighl  hear;  in  his  own  kingdom  he 
was  above  the  law.  "  They  will  be  shot  down,  of  course. 
The  governmenl  is  strong,  and  they  are  fools;  but  while 
they  arc  up,  it  is  high  jinks  for  us.  We  have  always  a 
good  time  of  it.  For  m\  part.  I  wish  they  would  have 
me  of  barricades  every  week.'' 

And  lie  drew  his  hand  across  his  throat  with  a  signifi- 
cant gesture;  he  had  drawn  it  across  other  throats  than 
those  of  lambs 

•■  It  will  lie  an  affair  of  children."  continued  .Mi  Minoux, 
his  tongue  still  loosened  by  the  lasting  fumes  of  the  alco- 
hol. "  Nothing  else.  They  are  wild  because  their  darling 
bas  been  arrested  for  thai    demonstration  at  the    Lycee. 


636  TRICOT  R  IN, 

They  are  fools!  The  government  knows  of  this — oh, 
yes — but  it  lets  them  go  on  a  little  while.  They  will 
rise,  and  they  will  arm,  and  they  will  sing  the  Marseil- 
laise— all  very  fine  for  a  few  hours, — and  then — ponz  ! 
the  cannon  will  clear  the  streets  of  them.  It  is  always 
so.  And  meantime  we — we  shall  plunder  the  houses ! 
Oh,  I  like  that  trade  of  yours,  Tricotrin — what  you  call 
it — patriotism  ?  It  is  very  much  like  ours — when  every- 
thing is  said.     They  work  together  amazingly  well !" 

Tricotrin  made  him  no  answer;  his  heart  was  heavy 
with  a  bitter  sense  of  utter  weakness  against  the  mailed 
might  of  circumstance,  the  merciless  cruelties  of  chance. 

He  knew  well  that  the  rough  reasoning  of  Mi  Minoux 
had  its  germ  of  a  terrible  truth  in  it ;  he  knew  well  that 
the  coarse  wisdom  of  the  law-breaker  foresaw  the  sure 
issue  of  the  unequal  conflict  with  which  the  time  was 
pregnant.  But  he  heard  only  dully ;  he  had  not  the 
strength  left  in  him  to  reply. 

The  dead  weight  of  his  own  pain  numbed  in  him  all 
other  sorrow  for  all  other  things.  The  power  of  sym- 
pathy was  numbed  in  him  by  the  deadness  of  hopeless 
regret.  The  impersonal  was  for  once  killed  in  him  by  the 
force  of  the  personal ;  as  it  is  oftentimes  killed,  from  birth 
till  death,  in  many  lives. 

He  gave  the  Patron  a  brief  good  night,  and  went  down 
through  the  long  steep  road  that  led  back  into  Paris.  Even- 
ing had  just  fallen,  and  the  first  drops  of  the  coming  rain- 
storm, the  first  sullen  roll  of  the  thunder,  gave  their 
warning  of  the  tempest  that  was  gathering  slowly  in  the 
west.  It  might  break  that  night,  it  might  drift  away  for 
a  brief  season  and  leave  the  skies  in  semblance  clear 
again ;  but  it  was  in  the  atmosphere — hot,  sickly,  terri- 
ble ;  making  the  air  troubled,  and  the  wind  winged  with 
pestilence,  keeping  the  parched  earth  waiting  like  a  cap- 
tive bound  and  athirst. 

As  he  passed  through  the  quarter,  the  people  stood  in 
groups  before  the  doors  of  their  wretched  dwellings.  The 
women,  ragged  and  filthy,  leaned  out  of  their  windows 
with  their  eyes  gleaming  in  exultation  from  under  their 
shaggy  brows.  Here  and  there,  one  had  twisted  up  her 
unkempt  hair  under  a  red  kerchief;  here  and  there,  one 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         631 

shrieked  fierce,  foul  invective  against  the  decent  and  the 
rich.  In  general  they  were  very  quiet,  and  had  the  still, 
dogged,  watchful  look  of  those  who  pant  for  action  but 
wait  perforce  for  a  word  of  command. 

They  were  the  terrible  daughters  of  terrible  mothers, — 
offspring  of  those  women  who  once  rose  at  the  beat  of 
the  drum  in  the  quarter  of  St.  Eustache,  and  poured  out 
down  the  roads  of  Versailles,  till  even  in  the  voice  of  the 
lion  there  was  fear  as  Mirabeau  muttered — "  Paris  marche 
sur  nous." 

He  never  looked  up  at  them  ;  he  never  noted  them,  as 
he  passed  through  their  streets  and  their  lanes.  His  head 
was  sunk,  his  eves  saw  nothing;  his  thoughts  were  filled 
only  with  this  lineage  of  evil,  this  heritage  of  shame, 
that  were  all  the  birthright  of  that  proud,  scornful,  fear- 
less life  which  believed  that  it  had  sprung  from  the  purple 
bed  of  a  Porphyrogenitus. 

One  of  them  placed  herself  in  his  path,  a  woman  of 
thirty  years,  with  a  head  fit  for  Pallas  Athene,  and  a 
body  strong  and  sinewy  as  the  frame  of  a  cart  mare,  with 
her  bosom  bare,  and  her  arms  akimbo,  and  her  garments 
all  in  rags. 

"  Trieotrin  !"  she  cried.     "  What  ails  you  ?" 

lie  started,  and  gazed  at  her  like  one  awakened  from 
a  trance. 

"Your  own  malady — unrest,"  he  answered,  curtly, 
and  strove  to  pass  her.      But  she  would  not  let  him  go. 

" Trieotrin  1"  she  muttered,  with  her  lips  close  to  his 
ear  as  she  readied  up  to  whisper,  "you  know? — you 
know  ?" 

'•  Fes.      I  know." 

He  knew  that  she  spoke  of  the  Insurrection  seething  in 
embryo  in  the  minds  of  many. 

"And  yon  are  with  u^  as  of  <>ld  ?" 

■•  I  can  never  be  againsl  you." 

"  Bui  you  will  imt  take  leadership,  they  aay  ?" 

■■  No.  I  will  not.  No1  to  lead  children  into  a  pit  of 
hell-tire.     Bu1  why  are  you  in  it — you, — a  woman'.'" 

Ber  eyes  glowed  like  those  of  a  lioness. 

■•  Women  have  made  many  revolutions!" 

"Ay;  they  have.     Revolutions  merciless,  murderous, 

54 


638  TRIGOTRIN, 

narrowed  to  personal  wrongs,  mad  with  the  rabies  of 
hate,  inspired  by  the  lack  of  bread  on  their  platters — revo- 
lutions that  recoiled  in  the  end  on  themselves ;  like  all 
revolts  on  all  women  !" 

Her  dark  face  grew  full  of  rage. 

"  Why  should  not  women  be  patriots  as  well  as  men  ?" 
she  muttered.     "  We  can  stab!" 

"Ah,  truly  !  And  you  never  think  that  when  the  stab 
lets  the  life  out  of  a  tyrant,  it  gives  him  in  return  all  the 
might  of  martyrdom.  Women  can  be  patriots  ? — yes. 
By  other  ways  than  the  dagger.  You  are  a  patriot — you 
— Athenais  Var  ?" 

"  To  the  death  !" 

Her  black  eyes  flamed  ;  her  mouth  set.  She  believed 
what  she  uttered ;  she  was  drunk  with  desire  to  be  one 
with  Corday  and  Theroigne  in  the  memories  of  the  people. 

"  That  is  well.     And  what  is  }rour  calling  ?" 

She  flushed  under  her  dark  skin  ;  her  infamy  was  in 
rags,  but  it  was  the  same  that  Coriolis  covered  with 
satins. 

An  infinite  sadness,  half  pity,  half  scorn,  wholly  sor- 
row, was  in  his  gaze  as  it  dwelt  on  her. 

"Ay!  A  patriot ! — and  your  trade  to  lead  your  coun- 
try's sons  into  evil  !  Can  you  give  tyrants  better  mockery 
of  patriotism  than  that  ?  When  women  gather  no  more 
in  the  bagnios,  and  drink  no  more  in  the  taverns,  and 
flaunt  no  more  in  the  ways  of  vice,  and  no  more  lure  and 
lead  the  youths  down  into  ruin,  then  will  it  be  time  for 
women  to  talk  of  politics  and  patriotism." 

A  strange  emotion  flitted  over  the  woman's  handsome 
face. 

"  Theroigne  was  vile,"  she  muttered;  "and  she  helped 
shatter  the  Bastile  !     That  was  something?" 

"  It  was.  But  to  purify  and  make  honest  her  own  life 
had  been  something  also, — something  greater  and  some- 
thing harder.  Having  some  germ  of  genius  in  her,  she 
would  do  something — poor  wretch  !  It  was  easy  to  in- 
flame the  mob ;  it  would  have  been  severe  to  bridle  her 
license.  So  she  rode  astride  of  a  cannon  ;  and  left  all  her 
vices  to  flourish.  Do  you  the  other  way ; — leave  the  can- 
non to  soldiers  ;  and  go  combat  your  passions.    Be  not  a 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  639 

coward  who  leaves  the  near  duty,  that  is  as  cruel  to  grasp 
as  a  nettle;  and  flies  to  gather  the  far-off  duty,  that  will 
flaunt  in  men's  sight  like  a  sunflower." 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  look  like  the  loojv  of  a  dumb 
beast  that  is  half  savage,  half  timid,  and  hung  her  head. 

"  You  are  right,"  she  said,  sullenly,  as  she  turned  away. 
"Women  are  cowards;  they  are  afraid  to  starve  !" 

He  went  onward,  losing  all  thought  of  her  as  his 
memory  drifted  back  to  the  fate  of  the  creature  he  loved. 
Many  strove  to  arrest  him  ;  but  he  waited  with  none  any 
more.  Yet  he  walked  on  without  aim,  without  destina- 
tion ;  walked  on  merely  in  that  wanderer's  impulse  that 
was  in  him  to  find  his  way  out  into  the  open  country,  and 
to  lose  all  pain  in  motion,  and  air,  and  the  sweep  of  the 
winds,  and  the  width  of  the  heavens. 

The  streets  were  crowded.  The  lamps  were  hung  for 
the  festival  of  the  morrow.  The  populace  were  taciturn, 
feverish,  gloomy  ;  watching  the  preparations  with  angry, 
sullen  eyes.  Every  face  wore  a  look  of  hushed,  vague, 
unquiet  expectation,  save  the  faces  of  the  indolent  idlers, 
whose  carriages  swept  in  endless  motion  through  the 
gaslit  avenues.  Every  now  and  then,  there  passed  some 
student,  or  artist,  or  workman,  who  wore  in  his  shirt  a 
spray  of  the  gray  lavender  that  was  piled  in  such  odor- 
ous heaps  in  the  flower-markets: — it  was  the  rallying 
sign  of  t  he  morrow. 

He  went  through  them,  on  and  on,  noting  nothing 
until;  as  he  took  his  way  without  thought,  he  came  close 
to  two  bronze  .nates  se1  in  a  massive  wall.  He  looked 
up,  and  shuddered.  They  were  the  gales  of  the  great 
Lira  Palace. 

There  were  many  people  about  them,  many  laced  live- 
ries, many  hurrying  pages;  and  men  were  lighting  the 
lamps  that  would  make  the  frontage  one  blaze  of  light. 

"Is  your  mistress  in  Paris?"  he  asked  of  our  thus 
busied. 

The  man,  garrulous  and  good-tempered,  turned  and 
laughed. 

"She  came  an  hour  or  two  ago.  It  is  her  fete  to-night 
to  the  princes.  1  thought  every  one  knew  that.  Look 
at  these  lamps,  three  thousand  of  them.     And  each  one 


640  TRICOTRIN, 

cost  five  francs  a  piece  !  Fine  times,  are  they  not  ? — for 
the  lamp-makers !" 

"  Is  she  well  ? — your  mistress  ?" 

"  Well  ?  I  suppose  so.  She  can  eat  and  drink  silver 
and  gold  if  she  likes !  I  saw  her  go  through  to-day.  She 
was  very  pale,  now  you  speak  of  it.  You  know  she  is  to 
wed  with  that  foreign  lord — what  is  it? — Estmere  ?  So 
her  women  tell  me.  They  say  it  is  a  love-marriage  ; 
that  is  rare  among  these  people." 

And  he  turned  again  to  the  lighting  of  his  three  thou- 
sand lamps. 

Tricotrin  went  onward. 

The  lamplighter  looked  uneasily  after  him. 

"  Look  you,"  he  said  to  his  comrade,  "that  man  moves 
like  a  man  I  once  saw  struck  by  a  bullet ;  he  walked  like 
that,  with  the  ball  in  him  ;  but  twelve  hours  after  he  was 
dead." 


CHAPTER   LXXI. 

"The  storm  passed?"  said  the  carver  of  ivory,  stand- 
ing out  in  the  hot  sulphur-scented  night  before  his 
threshold. 

Tricotrin  glanced  at  the  skies  ;  they  were  starlit  and 
very  clear. 

"  For  a  season,"  he  made  answer.  "It  will  be  but  the 
heavier  when  it  falls." 

The  carver  regarded  him  in  anxiety. 

"Is  it  true,"  he  murmured;  "true  that  the  students 
to-morrow ?" 

Tricotrin  pointed  to  the  skies. 

"  Who  cau  say  when  the  tempest  may  break?  It  is  in 
the  air.     It  may  pass — it  may  come." 

Clerot  shuddered. 

"  Tempests  kill  ?" 

"Ay.  They  kill.  But  more  mercifully  than  the  cor- 
ruption-born plagues  that  they  sweep  from  the  earth.  Is 
it  worse  with  Jacques  Benoit?" 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  641 

"  It  is  worse.  lie  sinks  surely,  and  he  is  light  in  the 
head;  he  talks  foolishness." 

He  asked  no  more;  he  went  up  the  dim  stairway  to 
the  place  where,  high  in  air,  punt  among  the  peaked 
masked  roofs,  was  the  attic  where  the  old  man  lay,  slowly 
dying,  and  muttering  foolishness, — of  the  old  mill-stream, 
and  the  sweet  pine-woods,  and  the  shining  yellow  sands, 
of  his  birth-country.  These  wen;  all  that  he  saw  now; 
though  for  sixty  years  he  had  stitched,  and  stitched,  and 
stitched,  till  his  eyes  were  blind,  over  the  black  foul- 
smelling  leather  in  the  garrets  and  workshops  of  Paris. 

His  mind  was  gone ;  but  over  his  face  glimmered  a 
smile  as  he  heard  the  voice  of  his  only  friend,  and  his 
withered  hand  crept  feebly  forth  to  meet  a  grasp  that  it 
could  return  but  for  a  moment. 

"Thou  comest  from  Leuzarch,"  he  muttered,  thinking 
still  of  his  birth-hamlet  in  the  west.  "Thou  hast  the 
scent  of  the    pines,   and    the    song  of  the    lories,    with 

thee ;"  and  with  that  he  ceased  his  feverish  babble, 

and  was   very  still,  with  the  smile  yet  about  his  mouth, 
and  a  curious,  listening,  happy  brightness  on  his  face. 

Tricotrin  watched  l>y  him  through  all  the  hours  of  the 
night; — a  heap  of  straw  his  couch;  the  only  light  a 
wretched  (lame  upon  the  hearth  that  warmed  a  little  iron 
pol  of  soup  for  t  he  sick  man  ;  above,  in  the  sloped  ceiling, 
the  narrow  space  they  called  a  lattice,  through  which  the 
blue  and  .-.tarry  skies  gleamed  curiously.  By  instinct — 
the  instinct  taught  by  many  such  vigils  as  this,  which 
had  been  common  in  a  life  that  men  had  deemed  wholly 
of  pleasure — he  served  all  the  few  sad  needs  of  this  death- 
bed, whose  disease  was  simply  age.  But,  for  himself,  he 
had  no  other  consciousness  than  that  of  the  keen,  hard 
agony  within  him,  that  still  dulled  all  his  senses  to  all 
oi  her  i  hings. 

To  that  little  garret,  so  high  in  air,  so  far  from  the 
lighted  streets,  so  near  to  the  starry  skies,  there  came  no 
sound  of  traffic  or  of  speech  to  call  his  thoughts  to  the 
Ways  and  the  wants  of  men.  All  the  day,  and  the  night 
preceding  the  day,  he  hail  spent  among  the  attics,  and 
the  cellars,  and  the  painting-rooms,  ami  the  Secrel   haunts 

of  Paris,  arguing  with  those  whose  young  souls  were 

54* 


642  TRICOTRIN, 

set  on  impossible  dreams,  whose  young  lives  were  eager 
to  be  thrust  forward  to  the  slaughter.  All  the  night  and 
all  the  day,  until  he  had  heard  the  Greek's  tale,  he  had 
bent  all  the  strength,  and  the  mind,  and  the  suasion,  and 
the  genius  in  him,  to  hold  back  from  their  madness  these 
children  who  dreamed  of  a  millennium,  and  rushed  on  to 
the  mouths  of  the  cannon;  who  murmured  of  Harmodius 
and  Aristogiton,  and  stumbled  blindfold  to  the  bench  of 
the  galleys. 

But  now, — where  he  sat  in  the  narrow,  dusky,  moonlit 
garret,  with  no  sound  on  the  silence  save  the  slow,  gentle 
breathing  of  the  old  man,  who  had  ceased  to  babble  of 
the  pine-wood  and  the  lories,  and  who  slept  on  his  hard 
knotted  bed  as  he  had  used  to  sleep  in  childhood  on  the 
moss  under  the  firs, — he  had  forgotten  these;  he  had  for- 
gotten the  things  that  had  been  nearest  and  holiest  to  him 
through  all  the  years  of  his  life;  he  had  forgotten  all  ex- 
cept the  passion  which  consumed  him. 

When  she  had  gone  from  him  in  her  youth,  his  rivals 
had  been  riches,  and  vanities,  and  all  the  manifold  tempta- 
tions of  the  senses — rivals  he  had  scorned  while  he  had 
cursed  them.  But  now — in  her  womanhood — his  antago- 
nist was  that  love  which  he  had  bade  her  follow ;  his 
spoiler  was  the  man  whom  he  had  bade  her  honor. 

All  his  life  long  no  taint  of  greed  had  darkened  his 
thoughts  against  the  possessor  of  his  heritage ;  no  pang 
of  grief  had  stirred  in  him  for  all  that  he  had  forfeited. 
When  the  calm  wisdom  of  maturity  had  surveyed  that 
rashness  of  boyish  chivalry,  no  single  desire,  no  solitary 
envy,  had  made  him  wish  the  past  undone.  There  had 
been  but  one  regret  in  him — the  regret  that  with  all  the 
affluence  and  power  which  his  act  had  conveyed  away  to 
Estmere,  it  had  not  been  his  also  to  give  with  them  the 
four-leaved  shamrock  of  perpetual  joy. 

The  passage  of  the  years — which  kills  all  things — had 
never  killed  in  him  the  tenderness  of  early  memories,  the 
nobility  of  early  impulse.  Envy  had  never  touched  him 
— can  the  king  who  voluntarily  abdicates,  envy  the  suc- 
cessor whom  he  has  of  his  own  will  lifted  to  a  throne, 
that  he,  himself,  may  roam  the  earth  unchallenged,  and  live 
in  the  sweet  peace  of  unwatched  freedom  ? 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         G43 

It  was  only  now, — now  when  the  beauty  of  a  woman 
was  the  thing  of  his  desire — that  he  cried  out  against  this 
fate  which  made  the  holder  of  his  heritage,  the  owner  of 
his  treasures,  lord  even  of  this  also. 

Above  the  little  casement,  in  the  roof,  the  stars  grew 
larger  with  the  coming-  of  the  dawn;  the  flame  of  the  cold 
hearth  died  down,  and  left  but  the  gray  sickly  ashes  there; 
the  rats,  growing  bold  in  the  silence,  stole  forth  and  rustled 
beneath  the  straw  on  which  he  sat.  There  was  not  even 
on  the  stillness  the  breathing  of  the  old  man  in  his  slum- 
ber. 

For,  once,  when  he  himself  had  arisen,  and  had  gone 
to  the  pallet  where  the  cobbler  lay,  he  had  listened  and 
heard  no  sound,  he  had  put  his  hand  to  the  sleeper's  lips 
and  felt  no  warmth,  Ik;  had  looked  closer  by  the  clear  light 
of  the  moon,  and  had  seen  that  the  deep  tranquillity  of 
death  had  stolen  over  the  grim,  dark,  wasted,  withered 
face,  which  had  a  smile  upon  it  as  though  in  his  last  hour 
he  had  heard  the  lories  singing. 

I  [e  had  dosed  the  lids  softly  over  the  old  dim  eyes  that 
through  the  mists  of  dissolution  had  once  more  seen  the 
purple  hills  and  the  wide  woods  of  the  country  of  their 
youth;  and  he  had  gently  folded  together  on  the  breast 
the  aged  hardened  hands  that  had  worked  on  in  ceaseless 
toil  for  the  bare  needs  of  life,  but  never  had  been  out- 
stretched for  alms  since  their  palms  had  been  sofl  and 
rosy  in  an  infant's  years,  catching  in  mirth  against  ;i 
mother's  skirts.  Then  he  had  gone  hack  to  his  place, 
beneath  the  roof-hole,  where  the  stars  shone  through  ;  and 
thus  he  still  kept  vigil  there, — alone  with  the  dead  old 
man,  and  with  the  knowledge  that  was  bitterness  passfng 
that  of  death. 

lie  held  in  his  hand  the  truth  that  would  tear  these 
lovers  asunder. 

But — to  use  it?  He  recoiled  from  the  power  as  men 
recoil  from  thoughts  of  murder. 

A  season  earlier,  truly,  he  would  have  forbade  her  to 
enter  the  life  of  a  man  with  any  lie  left  in  her  own.  When 
she  had  been  his,  he  had  not  suffered  her  to  go  In  her 
chosen  future  with  one  false  thing  to  Stain  her  innocence. 
By  every  law  that  binds  the  consciences  of  men,  he  knew 


G44  TRICOTRIN, 

that  to  withhold  her  history  from  one  who  should  stand 
to  her  in  a  husband's  place  was  to  do  dishonor,  treachery, 
and  a  craven  wrong.  He  knew  this  ; — a  day  sooner  he 
would  have  forced  its  truth  on  her  without  mercy,  and 
compelled  her  to  obey  its  dictates.  But  no  w, — this  severity 
of  justice  looked  no  better  than  the  brutality  of  vengeance. 

The  stern  simplicity  of  perfect  truth  which  he  had  ever 
followed,  as  men  lost  at  night  upon  the  moorlands  follow 
the  polar  star,  was  leading  now  to  that  way  whereby  the 
baser  part  of  passion  in  him  would  be  likewise  obeyed ; 
and  he  no  longer  dared  to  yield  himself  to  its  guidance, 
lest  desire  clothed  itself  in  honor,  and  the  longing  of 
jealousy  made  itself  look  fair  in  the  guise  of  duty. 

He  was  even  as  the  Syrian  who  beheld  his  single  vine- 
yard seized  by  the  monarch  in  whose  hands  were  all  the 
breadth,  and  beauty,  and  plenteous  increase  of  the  land; 
and  he  had  more  than  the  Syrian's  pain.  For  he  had  of 
his  own  will  given  the  scepter  from  his  hands,  and  of  his 
own  will  descended  to  a  wanderer's  estate  ;  and  because 
it  refused  to  bloom  and  ripen  in  the  shade,  he  had  turned 
his  young  vine  toward  that  sun-glow  which,  gilding  it, 
had  drawn  upon  its  luster  and  loveliness  the  robber's 
sight.  He  held  in  his  hand,  indeed,  the  power  by  which 
he  could  lay  bare  the  canker  at  the  root  of  this  fair  vine, 
and  make  it  worthless  in  his  spoiler's  eyes,  even  as  a  plant 
poison-fed  and  breathing  poison.  But  the  strength  and 
the  love  in  him  alike  forbade  him  that  power's  usage. 

The  vine  had  once  been  his, — the  vine  was  now  so  ex- 
quisitely fair,  so  laden  with  all  golden  fruitage, — should 
his  be  the  vengeance  that  should  tear  it  up  by  the  roots 
because  it  blossomed  within  the  walls  of  palaces,  and  his 
hand  no  more  could  touch  its  glories  ? 

The  worm  was  at  its  root,  indeed;  but  none  knew  this. 
The  vine  might  flourish,  and  grow  exceedingly,  and  die 
at  last  in  age  and  honor,  with  rich  rare  fruit  borne  by  it 
and  begat  on  it :  and  the  worm  might  never  waken,  never 
gnaw,  never  be  discerned. 

The  worm  might  be  forever  mute  and  numb :  the  vine 
live  on, — if  left  in  peace. 

He  could  not,  of  his  own  hand,  break  down  its  glorious 
crowns  of  bloom,  even  though  these  bloomed  for  a  prince's 
pleasure,  for  a  despoiler's  delight. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         645 


CHAPTER  LXXII. 

What  he  would  have  seen  could  his  gaze  have  pierced 
through  the  dark  mass  of  crowded  houses,  and  across  the 
reach  of  the  river,  into  the  Palace  of  the  Lira,  would  have 
been  a  woman  standing  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  painted 
chamber,  that  was  all  aglow  with  gold  and  silver,  and 
white  and  amber,  and  the  marvelous  chromatic  hues  that 
stole  from  a  million  blossoming  flowers — standing,  amid 
that  luxury  and  wealth,  as  a  stag  upon  the  bare  gray 
moorland,  in  the  raw  winter  dawn,  stands  at  bay  for  life. 

A  woman,  erect  as  a  desert-palm,  fierce  as  a  desert- 
beast,  with  one  hand  clinched  against  her  breast,  as 
though  she  drove  a  dagger  into  it  to  end  a  life  made  un- 
endurable hy  shame;  with  her  head  drawn  hack,  and  her 
face  bloodless,  and  in  all  her  limbs  the  frozen  horror  that 
sculptors  give  to  those  who  gaze  at  the  Kumenides. 

What  he  would  have  heard,  could  anv  sound  have 
stolen  on  the  air  from  the  mansions  of  the  princes  to  the 
attic  where  he  watched,  would  have  been  a  soft,  smooth, 
cruel  voice,  that  murmured  : 

"  You  tell  me  that  I  lie  ?  Look  !  is  there  no  memory 
in  her  face  ?  Ask  her,  my  lord,  if  this  thing  lie  nol  true? 
if  she  never  lived  on  the  mercy  of  alms,  if  she  never  was 
astray  thing  of  shame,  if  she  never  took  my  gold  toys  one 
glad  summer;  if  she  never  owed  bread  to  the  man  she 
forsook  ;  if  she  never  laughed  under  i  he  roof  of  the  actress 
whom  she  and  you  call  Coriolis  ?  Ask  her! — only  ask. 
See!  how  her  eyes  answer  you,  though  her  lips  are  as 
dumb  as  t  he  dead.  She  is  a  greal  duchess,  no  doubl  :  1  he 
world  has  done  her  honor  to-night;  there  is  no  beauty 
to  compare  with  her  beauty;  and  there  is  no  pride  so 
proml  as  her  pride!  She  will  be  also  your  wife,  yon  have 
said? — then  her  honor  musl  be  pure  as  the  snow  I — is  it 
I  who  am  dreaming  these  things?  Nay,  ask  her — she 
surely  must  know!     And  her  birth-name,  too  ;  you  would 


646  TRICOTRIN, 

wish  to  hear  that.  Can  she  tell  it  ?  I  fear  not !  She 
was  a  foundling,  you  see  !  Well,  I — I  who  thought  of 
your  honor,  over-much,  it  may  seem, — learned  this  also 
an  hour  ago.  Marriage  made  her  a  duchess, — the  world 
has  made  her  a  queen, — and  you,  you  would  make  her 
wife,  as  you  say.  But  birth  (a  mere  accident  this,  as 
democrats  show  us!) — birth  only  made  her, — Madelon 
Bruno.  Madelon  Bruno ! — the  world  knows  that  name  ; 
the  world  thought  it  scarcely  poetic  enough  for  her  mother 
who  bore  it.  Madelon  Bruno,  the  daughter,  is  the  Duchess 
de  Lira  :  Madelon  Bruno,  the  mother,  is — Coriolis." 


CHAPTER  LXXIII. 

The  night  slowly  waned,  and  grew  into  morning.  He 
never  moved,  but  sat  there  with  his  eyes  fastened  on  the 
ground,  and  his  teeth  ground  upon  each  other,  and  his 
face  gray,  and  dark  with  bloodless  shadow  like  that  of 
the  dead  man,  yonder,  on  his  narrow  bed. 

In  a  sense  there  seemed  a  fitness  to  him  in  this  com- 
panionship of  Death.  He,  who  had  so  often  loved  the 
fullest  crowds  of  men,  the  laughter  of  the  fair  and  wake, 
the  humors  of  the  streets,  the  gay  eccentric  follies  of  hu- 
manity in  herds,  found,  in  a  measure,  sympathy  and 
friendship  in  that  old,  worn-out,  lifeless  frame  that  rested 
there — at  peace  at  last, — after  its  fourscore  years  of  trav- 
ail, pain,  and  want,  and  thankless  labor. 

Death ! — was  it,  after  all,  the  only  mercy  that  life 
brought  ? 

Surely; — since  those  whom  the  gods  love,  die  young; 
and  they  who  live,  live  to  cry  wearily,  soon  or  late,  "  0 
that  we  were  dead !" 

Life,  to  him,  had  been  sweet,  and  luscious,  and  ever 
pregnant  with  flavor,  like  a  paradise-apple,  God-given ; 
but  now  at  its  close  it  grew  hateful,  and  bitter  as  worm- 
wood, and  empty  as  ashes;  and  he  would  fain  that  he 
had  died  in  the  years  of  his  youth. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.  (547 

As  the  first  beams  of  the  daybreak  stole  through  the 
lattice  in  the  roof,  and  the  warmth  from  the  sunrise 
awakened  the  street  swallows  under  the  eaves,  there  came 
a  swift  soft  movement  like  the  brushing  wing  of  a  hasten- 
ing bird.  Through  the  unlatched  door,  into  that  shadowy 
place,  another  shadow  came,  the  shadow  of  a  woman  that 
glided  to  his  feet,  and  fell  there. 

"  Is  it  true  ?"  she  cried.     "  Oh,  God  !— is  it  true  ?" 

Her  voice  had  no  likeness  of  itself;  her  face  had  the 
startled  ghostly  horror  of  those  who  have  beheld  un- 
natural crime;  her  whole  form  sank  and  crouched  like  (he 
body  of  a  spent  and  dying  stag.  All  the  rich  color  and 
undulation  of  robes  fit  for  an  empress  swept  about  her, 
crushed  and  torn;  on  her  breast  and  among  her  hair 
great  jewels  glittered;  beneath  her  bosom  a  girdle  of  pre- 
cious stones  coiled  like  a  serpent;  and  all  their  glow  and 
splendor  made  only  deadlier  by  their  contrast  the  white- 
ness of  her  gasping  mouth,  the  stricken  horror  in  her 
eyes,  the  convulsive  helpless  trembling  of  her  limbs,  as 
she  dropped  there. 

"  Is  it  true  ?"  she  cried,  clasping  him  with  her  arms 
as  though  in  him  only  were  her  strength  against  this 
shame  which  killed  her.     "Is  it  true?" 

"Is  what  true?" 

The  woid-  died  almost  as  they  passed  his  lips;  his 
face  was  bloodless  as  her  own  ;  his  hands  shook  like  hers 
as  he  strove  to  raise  her.  To  gain  time — breath — thought 
— he  asked  her  this;  but  without  answer  he  knew  what, 
this  thing  was  which  drove  from  her  all  her  glory  and 
her  power,  and  senl  her  here  to  crouch  like  a  fallen  and 
accursed  creature  1 1ms. 

"You  know! — you  know  I"  she  gasped,  reading  that 

knowledge  in  his  face.     "Look  at  me,— meel  my  eyes, 

if  it  he  a,  dream,  a  lie,  a  hideous  device  of  hatred,  look 
at  me  ;  look  long  and  pityingly  as  you  used  to  look,  and 
toll  me  so  that   it   is  false  I" 

She  clung  to  him  as  she  used  to  cling  in  the  brief  sor- 
rows of  her  childl I.  and  gazed  up  in  his  face  with  eyes 

that  SOUghl  to  pierce  his  very  heart. 

There  was  a  -real  agony  in  his  own  ;  and  they  looked 
OUt.nol  at   her,  but  at  the   morning   .-tar.-   that    -lion,     he 
yond  the  lattice 


648  TRICOTRIN, 

She  was  answered. 

Her  head  dropped;  her  arras  let  go  their  hold;  she 
fell  as  the  dying  stag  falls  beneath  the  last  death-shot. 

He  stooped  and  raised  her,  and  bore  her  into  the  empty- 
attic  near,  which  had  been  the  dead  cobbler's  place  of 
labor,  and  laid  her  down  upon  the  heap  of  leathern  shreds, 
that  served  there  as  a  couch  of  ease. 

She  lay  like  an  animal  stunned  ;  her  arms  flung  out, 
her  head  bowed  on  them,  her  hair  unloosened,  with  the 
jewels  braided  in  it,  sweeping  the  bare  boarding  of  the 
garret-floor. 

He  stood  above  her,  his  eyes  filled  with  an  infinite  love, 
an  infinite  pity,  an  infinite  love  such  as  never  again  would 
be  hers,  let  her  lovers  gather  by  thousands  as  they  would. 

In  the  years  of  her  gladness  he  had  been  forgotten ; 
in  the  hour  of  her  misery  she  had  remembered  him.  He 
had  his  vengeance. 

There  was  silence  in  the  chamber  ;  the  city  still  rested 
from  labor ;  the  sun  had  barely  risen ;  the  shadows  of 
night  still  hovered  where  she  lay.  He  never  spoke,  he 
never  touched  her,  he  never  wondered  why  she  had  come 
to  him  thus,  or  who  had  borne  to  her  that  secret  which 
he  thought  was  his  own  alone.  He  only  gazed  at  her 
with  an  unutterable  yearning  love  ; — and,  as  the  diamonds 
on  her  robes  glittered  in  the  gloom,  he  shuddered  as 
though  he  saw  in  them  the  smile  of  those  devils  of  vanity 
and  desire,  who  had  been  his  rivals,  and  her  tempters,  in 
the  old  years  that  were  gone. 

Suddenly  she  lifted  herself,  and  looked  up  at  him  with 
blind  eyes. 

"  Is  it  true,  then  ?"  she  asked,  still. 

He  stooped  over  her,  and  his  voice  had  that  tenderness 
which  had  survived  in  him  through  all  the  wrongs  and 
all  the  cruelties  her  wanton,  thankless  egotisms  had  dealt 
to  it. 

He  bent  over  her  and  laid  his  hand  with  the  pity- 
ing touch  of  old  upon  her  head.  He  was  silent ;  he  could 
not  answer  her  in  any  other  wise. 

"  Oh,  my  God,  my  God !"  she  moaned,  aloud.    "  If  only 
you  had  left  me  to  perish  in  my  infancy  1" 
He  still  answered  nothing. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         649 

The  bitterness  of  this  reproach  was  all  that  paid  him 
for  his  martyrdom ! 

She  raised  herself  with  the  fierce  gesture  of  a  wounded 
leopardess. 

"  And  you  knew  this  ?     Always  ? " 

"  Never  till  yesterday." 

"  Yet  it  is  true,  you  say  ?  Speak !  answer  me !  Tell 
me  all  you  know, — all, — no  matter  how  hideous  or  how 
vile!" 

"  But  what  brutes  have  borne  it  to  you  ? " 

"No  •natter!  Tell  me  all — worse  than  I  have  heard 
there  cannot  be.  Quick, — for  the  love  of  Heaven,  or  you 
will  drive  me  mad!" 

Half  risen  from  the  floor,  with  her  hands  clinched  on 
his  wrists,  and  her  dilated  eyes  gazing  up  into  his  face, 
she  forced  the  truth  from  him  with  imperious,  delirious 
command.  Resistance  maddened  her,  as  she  had  said  ; — 
this  woman  who  awoke  from  dreams  of  the  heritage  of 
kings  to  find  her  parentage  in  poverty  and  shame. 

He  obeyed,  and  told  her  all. 

She  heard  in  unbroken  silence  ;  crouching,  as  the  mag- 
nificence of  the  leopardess  crouches  under  the  throes  of 
pain,  a  dumb,  passionate,  breathless  terror  on  her  droop- 
ing face. 

"And  I  saw  him  die — die  at  her  feet!"  she  muttered. 

The  horror  of  her  fate  consumed  her  as  with  fire — fire 
wherein  that  staff  of  life,  her  pride,  withered,  and  fell  in 
ashes,  as  a  reed  held  in  a  flame. 

The  shame  of  her  mother  w  as  upon  her  like  the  weight 
of  her  own  shame;  the  foulness  that  was  her  inheritance 
seemed  to  taint  her  like  a  plague;  all  the  haughty,  re- 
joicing scoru  of  her  high  estate  had  vanished  as  the 
prophet's  gourd  vanished  in  the  space  of  a  fleet  summer 
night. 

In  all  her  glory  she  was  desolate. 

And  in  her  desolation  it  was  not  to  her  friends,  or  her 
lovers,  or  her  courtiers,  thai  she  turned,  but  to  the  man 
whom  she  had  forsaken,  and  forgotten,  and  abjured. 

"It  Is  just,"  she  murmured,  dreamily,  gazing  at  him 
with  her  hot,  wild,  tearless  eyes.  "1  sinned  against 
you; — how  could  I  choose  but  sin,  having  been  burn  of 

55 


650  TRICOTRIN, 

her  ?     This  is  just  vengeance  on  my  crime  to  you,  venge- 
ance sent  of  God  !" 

"Hush!  Are  His  weapons  a  frail  woman's  vices? 
And  what  vengeance  have  I  ever  asked  of  God  or  man 
on  you?" 

The  grave,  sweet  patience  of  his  voice  stilled  the  pas- 
sion in  her  as  it  had  once  stilled  the  wayward  and  rebel- 
lious spirit  of  her  childhood. 

She  was  silent,  lying  there  with  her  head  still  bowed 
down  on  her  arms,  her  eyes  still  hidden  from  the  rays  of 
day. 

His  face  grew  dark  with  wrath — wrath  against  her 
destroyer ;  his  breath  came  sharply  and  hardly,  as  he 
bent  over  and  asked : 

"  What  devil  was  pitiless  enough  to  tell  you  ?" 

She  lifted  herself  upon  her  elbow,  and  under  their 
swollen  lids  her  eyes  flashed  with  a  blue  light  like  flame. 

"A  devil?  yes;  a  devil  who  came  in  angel's  guise  to 
save  his  father's  honor  !  My  young  lover  whom  I  thought 
the  fairies  sent  me — the  tempter  to  whom  she  would  have 
sold  me,  body  and  soul,  in  my  child's  ignorance." 

"What!  his  son  ?" 

"  His  son.  You  know  it,  then  ?  Oh,  Heaven,  why  not 
have  warned  me  ?  Ah  !  hush  !  I  dare  to  reproach  you — 
I ! — when  my  whole  life  has  been  a  crime  which  you  have 
never  wearied  of  forgiving!  Listen!  I  saw  him  once, 
five  nights  ago,  at  Villiers,  only  for  one  instant  as  he 
passed  me  by.  I  knew  him  then,  and  he  knew  me.  On 
the  morrow  he  was  gone,  leaving  a  gracious  message  of 
regret.  That  very  night  I  promised  to  be  Estmere's 
wife  ;  that  very  night  I  had  sworn  to  myself  that  nothing 
on  my  part  should  be  hidden  from  his  sight.  But  where 
was  the  use  to  take  him  truth  that  only  could  have  seemed 
to  him  a  fear  ?  Once  having  looked  on  his  son's  face,  I 
held  my  peace.  I  let  my  doom  come  as  it  would.  I 
kept,  so  long  as  fate  would  leave  them  to  me,  his  love, 
his  trust,  his  honor.  I  knew  how  soon  they  would  be 
struck  and  perish.  This  was  madness  ?  I  think  I  have 
been  mad  since  the  night  I  saw  that  smooth,  soft,  devilish 
face  ;  I  have  been  like  a  creature  in  a  dream  ;— the  dream 
has  broken  ;  I  am  wakened  now — wakened  to  see,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         651 

hear,  and  feel  all  things — my  misery,  my  wickedness,  my 
shame." 

Her  hands  clinched  on  him  as  she  spoke,  and  drew  him 
down  to  her,  seeming  thus  to  keep  hold  upon  some 
strength,  some  reason. 

He  shuddered  as  he  gazed  on  her. 

"  Those  are  wild  words,"  he  murmured.  "  The  shame 
is  another's,  not  your  own,  and — you  forget.  Your 
father  was  poor  indeed,  but  he  had  honor  in  his  simple, 
bitter,  martyred  life  that  no  wife's  sin  could  touch.  You 
are  his,  no  less  than  you  are  hers.  He  was  a  rude,  un- 
learned seaman,  it  is  true,  but  he  had  in  him  honesty, 
heroism,  truth.     Are  these  mean  birthrights  ?" 

A  shiver  ran  through  her  crouching  frame.  To  the 
woman  who  had  believed  herself  born  from  the  secret 
nuptials  of  some  Porphyrogenitus,  the  sea-bird's  nest 
looked  foul  as  any  vulture's  ;  and  the  strength  and  the 
simplicity  of  this  compensation  to  which  he  bade  her 
turn  were  on  heights  beyond  her  reach. 

The  man,  nobly  bred,  could  recognize  the  nobility  that 
lies  in  character  apart  from  all  circumstance  and  all 
chalices.  The  woman,  basely  born,  could  measure  by 
nothing  save  the  visible  symbols  of  dignity  and  great- 
nesa,  of  poverty  and  shame. 

"  Birthright  I"  she  echoed,  with  a  laugh  that  had  in  it 
the  sound  of  the  laughter  of  Coriolis.  "  Do  not  say  that 
word,  if  you  would  bid  me  keep  my  senses.  To  night,  [ 
was  in  al!  my  glory.  Kings  and  princes  were  under  my 
roof.  I  had  his  love  and  the  world's  honor.  In  all  Paris 
then:  was  not  a  creature  greater  or  more  envied  than  I. 
All  splendors,  ami  all  follies,  and  all  graces  that  my 
wealth  could  give,  I  gathered  there.  I  knew  that  some 
evil  would  fall ;  I  knew  that  his  son  would  come  there; 
I  knew  that  the  days  of  my  peace  were  numbered.  I 
chose  that  he  should  behold  me  at  my  greatest,  my  high- 
est, my  proudest  ;  I  chose  so  to  score  myself  into  his 
heart  and  his  soul  thai  he  should  never  lie  able  to  put  me 
away  from  them,  strive,  how  he  would.  I  had  my  vic- 
tory— sof'ar.  Be  loves  me;  oh,  God,  he  loves  me;  but 
it  is  passion  only;  not  such  love  as  yours.  Listen!  lo- 
nighl  has  beeo  the  mosl  brilliant  night  of  my  life,  and 
this  is  how  it  has  ended." 


652  TRICOTRIN, 

Rising-,  and  pacing  to  and  fro,  like  a  chained  leopardess 
infuriate  with  its  wounds,  or  cast  down  upon  her  rude 
couch  in  the  exhaustion  of  despair,  shrinking  from  the 
light  of  day,  she  told  him  how  its  horror  had  come  to 
her,  stealing  like  a  thief  in  the  night  into  her  palace. 

Every  word  that  had  been  uttered  had  cut  her  like  a 
scourge ;  she  could  number  them  as  the  quivering  creat- 
ure numbers  his  stripes  by  their  separate  sharp  agonies. 

He  heard  her  in  silence,  his  face  hidden  in  his  hands. 
What  solace  had  he  to  give  this  woman  to  whom  his  love 
was  nothing  ? 

Once  only  be  asked  her — 

"And  he — he  whom  you  are  to  wed  ?  he  loves  you 
still?" 

She  laughed  once  more,  the  laugh  that  was  so  terrible 
in  that  silent  place. 

"  Still  1  Is  he  like  you,  that  evil  and  shame  should  only 
be  titles  to  his  pity  and  his  pardon  ?  No  woman  is  loved  so 
twice.  He  forced  his  son  from  my  presence ;  he  refused 
to  believe,  while  others  hearkened;  he  was  generous, 
noble,  great.  It  is  his  nature.  But,  once  in  solitude,  I 
saw  the  look  upon  his  face.  How  is  it  I  live  yet?  It 
maddened  me;  I  knew  that  I  was  dead  to  him — worse 
than  dead — forever  1  I  told  him  the  truth  of  you  and 
of  myself.  I  told  him  everything  my  life  had  known.  I 
prayed,  I  begged,  I  knelt  to  him, — not  for  his  love,  or  his 
forgiveness,  but  only  for  his  belief.  It  was  his  doubt 
that  killed  me." 

"  He  doubts  still  ?"  His  voice  was  stifled  as  he  spoke, 
his  hands  were  locked  over  his  eyes. 

"  Doubt !  oh,  God,  what  is  there  for  him  to  believe  ?  I 
am  a  living  lie  to  him  and  to  the  world.  I  implored,  I 
conjured,  I  tempted  him.  Again  and  again  he  almost 
yielded ;  again  and  again  I  saw  love,  and  love  only,  in 
his  eyes ;  and  yet  I  knew  he  would  never  yield  utterly. 
There  was  such  scorn  in  him,  such  dread  of  me,  and  such 
disdain.  '  Not  for  your  birth,'  he  cried  to  me;  'not  for 
your  mother's  shame  would  you  be  less  pure,  less  honored 
in  my  sight.  It  is  your  life,  your  lie  !  You  tell  me  the 
truth  now  ?  it  may  be  so.  But  it  is  told  too  late  !'  And 
then  I  grew  mad,  I  think,  and  broke  from  him,  and  got 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  653 

out  into  the  street  unseen,  I  know  not  how,  and  came  to 
you,  as  beaten  dogs  come  to  the  only  creature  that  has 
pity  for  them." 

And  the  love  which  she  had  slighted,  and  mocked, 
and  trodden  on  so  long,  had  vengeance  on  her,  and  grew 
in  might  and  majesty  before  her  sight,  and  was  her  only 
refuge  now,  her  only  friend,  her  only  mercy.  And  yet ! 
more  dear  than  this,  was  that  love  which  had  disbelieved, 
which  had  scorned,  which  had  repudiated  her. 

"What  is  my  life  worth  if  he  be  lost  to  me?"  she 
cried.  "  What  are  my  rank,  my  lands,  my  titles,  my  dig- 
nities, to  me  without  him?" 

In  the  intense  self-absorption  of  her  anguish,  she  never 
heeded  what  blows  her  words  might  strike  upon  the  heart 
of  her  hearer. 

All  she  remembered  was  that  one  great  horror  which 
enfolded  her — the  horror  of  that  destiny  which  had  hung 
over  her  when  in  the  fair  fancies  of  her  infancy  she  had 
dreamed  herself  the  daughter  of  the  old  dead  kings  of 
Gaul ;  the  destiny  which  had  seized  her  in  the  attained 
ambition  of  her  womanhood,  while  she  laughed  in  her 
glad  scorn  at  fate,  and  love,  and  death;  the  destiny 
which  clung  around  her,  stilling  her  life  as  the  tire  web 
of  sorcery  clung  around  Glance. 

He  never  spoke,  where  he  stood  against  the  open  lat- 
tice, through  which  the  hot  air  of  the  stormy  and  oppress- 
ive dawn  poured  like  the  fumes  of  a  slaughter-house. 

She,  flung  down  upon  the  heap  of  leather,  with  her 
arms  outstretched,  and  her  face  hidden  on  them,  longed 
to  bury  herself  from  that  searchini'-  light  of  eouiinir 
day. 

She  thought  that  never  more  could  she  go  forth  into 
the  sunshine,  and  meet  the  eves  of  men,  and  be  as  she 
had  been.  Her  past  was  branded,  her  present  was  laid 
waste  ;  her  future  was  accursed:  the  greatness  that  she 
had  said  could  never  pass  away,  was  polluted  and  with- 
out, worth  ;  her  dignities  and  her  possessions,  and  all  her 
glories  in  which  she  had  exulted,  as  in  a  strength  that 
made  her  godlike,  were  now  of  no  avail. 

They  endured  indeed,  they  were  unchanged,  unchange- 
able: but  they  could  not  cleanse  the  life  whence  hers  had 

55* 


654  TRICOTRIN, 

sprung;  they  could  not  give  her  back  the  pure  and  fra- 
grant peace  of  honor.  The  shame  of  her  mother  was 
upon  her — upon  her  for  evermore. 


CHAPTER    LXXIV. 

Above  the  million  roofs  of  the  city,  the  flush  of  the 
full  clay  came.  From  out  its  nook  the  little  monkey 
crept,  and  gazed  at  her  with  wondering,  sad  eyes.  In 
the  stillness,  the  great  black  door  of  the  garret  was 
thrust  open — in  its  embrasure  her  lover  stood. 

He  had  tracked  her  hither. 

The  fairness  of  his  face  was  livid,  his  voice  was 
strangled  in  his  throat,  his  eyes  had  the  fury  and  the 
woe  that  men  had  seen  once  in  them, — once — in  the 
days  of  his  youth,  when  the  dishonor  of  his  wife  had 
been  revealed  to  him. 

He  threw  one  glance  on  her, — one  glance  of  unutter- 
able horror, — then  went  straightway  to  the  place  where 
Tricotrin  stood. 

"  She  has  fled  to  you  !" 

Tricotrin  shook  off  his  grasp;  and  stood  silent:  facing 
him,  with  the  light  of  the  dawn  upon  them. 

She  had  fled  to  him! — well,  who  to  her  had  so  great  a 
right,  so  high  a  title?  All  the  hatred  he  bore  to  this 
man,  as  to  her  owner  and  his  spoiler,  stirred  in  him,  and 
prevailed,  and  killed  the  old  soft  tenderness  of  early 
memories  and  of  boyish  love. 

She,  with  a  great  cry,  sprang  from  her  wretched  couch, 
and  dragged  herself  to  her  lover's  feet,  and  threw  herself 
there  in  piteous  abandonment,  calling  out  to  him  to  be- 
lieve— to  believe — only  to  believe. 

He  did  not  heed  her,  even  while  all  his  frame  thrilled 
at  her  touch  and  burned  under  her  beauty ;  he  did  not  an- 
swer her;  he  did  not  raise  her;  he  only  looked  still  at  the 
man  in  whom  he  saw  her  closest  friend,  his  deadliest  foe. 

"What  have  you  been  to  her?"  he  cried,  aloud, — "her 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  655 

husband,  her  father,  her  paramour  ?  Answer  me !  What 
tie  binds  you?  What  bond  unites  you?  Is  it  sin,  or 
secrecy,  or  marriage,  or  blood  ?  Answer  me  !  What  is 
this  woman  to  you?" 

Tricotrin,  standing  erect,  with  the  gleam  of  the  dawn 
on  his  face,  and  the  darkness  of  evil  passions  in  his  soul, 
looked  him  in  the  eyes  with  a  keen,  hard,  changeless  gaze, 
and  still  kept  silent. 

"Answer  me!"  Estmere  cried,  again.  "Answer  me  ! 
or " 

She  sprang  up  and  caught  his  lifted  arm,  and  drew  his 
hands  into  hers,  and  clung  to  him  so  that  he  could  not 
move  unless  he  cast  her  off  from  him  with  violence,  and 
trampled  her  aside. 

"Wait,  wait!"  she  muttered.  "Strike  me,  not  him. 
What  guilt  there  is,  is  mine — mine,  to  you  and  to  the 
world.  There  has  never  been  anything  on  earth  greater, 
gentler,  more  long-suffering,  than  his  life  to  mine.  I  have 
been  base  to  him,  faithless,  cowardly,  unworthy;  hut  he  1 
— he  has  never  once  reproached  me,  never  once  deserted 
me.  I  was  a  wretched  stray  thing — you  know,  you 
know!  —  nameless,  homeless,  desolate,  utterly;  and  he 
had  pity  upon  me, — pity,  when  I  was  a  little  lost  child 
dying  of  hunger  save  for  the  bread  he  gave  me.  Ah, 
God!  call  my  crime  what  you  will  ;  curse  me,  loathe  me, 
leave  me, — that  is  just;  but  believe, — only  believe.  Give 
him  justice,  and  give  him  honor.  In  my  vanity  and  my 
sin  I  have  refused  him  both  so  long." 

The  evil  of  the  world  had  fallen  from  her,  the  false 
shame  of  her  false  pride  had  perished;  truth  and  courage 
revived  in  this  soul,  wherein  they  had  so  long  been  dead; 
her  voice  rang  clear  and  Btrong  in  all  its  suffering.  lie, 
whom  six1  conjured,  shuddered  under  that  passionate  ap- 
peal, and  gazed  down  into  her  eyes,  staggered,  confused, 
unmanned,  knowing  not  what  to  doubt,  nor  what  to 
belie\  e. 

"If  this  he  true,"  he  hi n nmi n ■( I,  "your  sili  to  me 
weighs  nothing  beside  your  .-in  to  him." 

"No!"  she  cried,  aloud,  as  Bhe  loosed  her  arms  from 
aboul  him,  and  sank  down  at  his  feet  with  the  hot  blood 
burning  over  all  her  drooping  face. 


656  TRICOTRIN, 


u 


No.  To  you  I  sinned  indeed,  because  I  gained  your 
love  upon  a  lie  ;  but  you  were  a  stranger  ;  I  owed  you 
no  debt,  I  bore  you  no  allegiance :  you  were  free  to  seek 
me,  and  as  free  to  leave  me.  But  to  him  my  whole  life 
has  been  a  crime — a  crime  when  I  forsook  him  because 
ambition  bribed  me ;  a  crime  when  I  repaid  him  for  his 
charity  with  discontent  and  with  ingratitude;  a  crime 
when  I  was  too  base  to  let  the  world  know  all  I  owed 
him ;  a  crime  when  I  heard  you  slight  him  with  your 
satires,  and  held  my  peace  because  I  was  too  base  a 
coward  to  dare  lift  up  my  voice  in  his  defense  and  honor. 
It  is  hard  for  you  to  believe  me, — yes! — I  have  forfeited 
belief.  But,  as  God  lives,  I  will  not  cease  to  kneel  to 
you  till  you  believe  in  him." 

He  looked  down  on  her,  blinded,  bewildered,  pierced 
to  the  heart,  confused  with  a  crowd  of  half-formed 
thoughts. 

"  Your  love  is  so  great  for  him  ?"  he  asked,  the  passion 
in  his  own  soul  jealously  seizing  on  that  which  smote  it 
the  most  cruelly. 

Her  eyes  met  his  in  one  long  look,  then  turned  and 
rested  on  the  man  whom  she  had  wronged. 

"Yes,  my  love  is  great,  now,"  she  said,  slowly;  "but 
what  is  great, — great  as  eternity, — is  my  remorse." 

He  was  silent;  the  force  that  lies  in  perfect  and  un- 
flinching truth  was  iu  her  now  ;  it  conquered  him,  it  was 
stronger  than  he,  it  bore  in  on  him  with  a  witness  he 
could  no  longer  doubt,  the  purity  of  this  passionless  love, 
the  intensity  of  this  vain  remorse.  He  knew  that  there 
was  nothing  in  this  love  wThieh  he,  as  her  lover,  as  her 
husband,  need  envy,  or  could  suspect ;  he  knew  it,  as  men 
in  such  hours  know  truths  that  their  colder  reason  would 
mock,  their  worldly  skepticism  would  scorn.  But  he  saw 
also  that  this  remorse  was  for  a  guilt  none  the  less  base, 
none  the  less  craven,  because  in  its  shame  it  was  still 
chaste  as  ice,  because  in  its  selfishness  no  sensual  stain 
was  found. 

He  believed ;  but  belief  was  as  deadly  to  him  as  his 
doubt  had  been.  She  wras  as  worthless,  in  his  sight,  as 
though  she  had  been  the  faithless  and  dishonored  wife  of 
the  man  whom  she  had  forsaken — of  the  man  who  stood 


THE  STORY   OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         657 

there,  in  the  radiance  of  the  dawn,  motionless,  wordless, 
urging  no  claim,  seeking  no  justification,  giving  no  sign 
that  he  heard  or  that  he  saw  under  all  the  passionate 
invocation,  the  violent  despair,  of  this  woman  who  had 
abandoned  him  for  the  treasures  and  the  triumphs  of  the 
world. 

It  was  at  him,  and  not  at  her,  that  he  himself  looked, 
as  he  spoke. 

"  This  is  true?"  he  asked  of  him. 

The  eyes  of  Tricotrin  met  his  own  with  a  strange 
weariness,  and  scorn,  and  pity,  all  in  one,  in  their  re- 
gard. 

"  It  is  true,"  he  answered,  briefly.  His  voice  was  cold 
and  harsh,  and  all  its  melody  was  gone.  For  once  he  did 
not  seek  to  aid  her;  for  once  he  did  not  stir  to  lift  her 
burden  from  her;  for  once  he  left  her,  alone,  with  the  love 
that  she  had  chosen  in  the  stead  of  his.  If  it  failed  her, 
if  it  scorned  her,  if  it  repudiated  her,  it  had  been  her 
choice.     He  left  it  to  deal  with  her  as  it  would. 

She,  kneeling  there  at  the  feet  of  her  lover  as  a  criminal 
at  the  feet  of  her  judge,  looked  upward  in  his  face. 

"  You  believe  now  ?"  she  cried  to  him. 

He  bent  his  head. 

"  Yes,  I  believe." 

In  the  assent  there  was  a  colder,  a  more  hopeless,  a 
more  unyielding  condemnation  of  her  sin  than  could  have 
spoken  in  the  uttermost  ferocity  and  abandonment  of  up- 
braiding. He  believed;  and  because  he  believed  in  the 
truth  of  her  history,  he  believed  also  in  the  cowardice  and 
the  falsehood  of  her  life. 

She  rose  up,  slowly,  and  stood  before  him;  her  arms 
were  crossed  upon  her  bosom  that  heaved  ami  swelled 
beneath  their  pressure ;  her  face  was  like  the  marble  mask 
that  sculptors  take  from  a  dead  loveliness;  her  eyes  were 
full  of  an  unutterable  woe. 

Bu1  Bhe. prayed  no  more  for  mercy,  she  implored  no 
more  for  pardon  ;  she  had  asked  lor  belief,  and  it  had  been 
q  her ;  it  was  all.  she  knew,  i  hat  she  could  claim  ;  and 
thi'  superb  pride  which  had  been  her  idol  for  so  long,  and 
which  that  nighl  had  been  stricken  down  as  a  Stately 
palm  is  struck  by  lightning,  was  in  her  still,  though  broken 


658  TRICOTRIN, 

and  stilled  by  the  bitter  shame,  the  abject  humiliation 
that  her  birth  had  brought. 

All  her  life  through,  she  knew,  she  had  wronged  Love. 
If  now  Love  had  its  vengeance,  and  had  forsaken  her, 
was  the  crime  hers,  or  Love's  ? 

It  was  only  from  his  look  that  she  cowered  and  shrank, 
as  from  a  thing  unbearable. 

"Have  you  no  pity?"  she  cried,  suddenly,  the  one 
appeal  wrung  from  her  by  her  utter  desolation.  "  My 
mother's  shame  I  knew  as  little  as  you  until  to-night.  I 
wronged  you;  yes,  but  not  one  tithe  as  I  wronged  him. 
He  has  forgiven — shall  not  you  forgive?" 

Estmere  turned  from  her  with  a  shudder,  as  men  turn 
from  the  dead  disfigured  body  of  the  beauty  they  have 
loved. 

"Forgive!  forgive!"  he  echoed;  "what  is  it  to  for- 
give? My  pardon  cannot  give  you  back  your  honor  and 
your  truth." 

"  Oh  God !  you  said  you  loved  me  !" 

"  Loved  you !  Men  love  women  that  are  foul  as  they 
are  fair.  I  gave  you  tenfold  more  than  love  ;  I  gave  you 
—trust !" 

A  shiver  shook  her  all  down  her  slender,  supple,  lofty 
frame.  She  knew  that  never  more  could  this  man  trust 
her  with  the  one  sweet,  full,  idolatrous,  and  perfect  faith 
with  which  he  had  believed  in  her  when  his  first  kiss  had 
touched  her  lips.  For  faith  is  as  the  white  pure  crown 
of  the  century  aloe,  which,  once  cut  down,  can  bloom 
no  more  within  the  space  of  the  same  lives  that  first 
rejoiced  in  it. 

He,  drawing  his  gaze  from  her  as  one  tempted  beyond 
his  strength  draws  it  from  the  loveliness  that  assails  him, 
moved  away  slowly,  with  his  head  sunk  on  his  chest. 

"  The  woman  false  once  is  false  always,"  he  said,  briefly, 
with  a  quiver  iu  his  proud  clear  voice  that  no  manhood 
and  no  pride  could  stay.  "  Men,  younger,  happier  than 
I,  might  give  you  their  faith  still — I  cannot.  You  have 
killed  my  life,  you  shall  not  beggar  me  of  honor." 

And  without  one  backward  look  at  her  —  one  look 
whereby  that  exquisite  and  sensuous  loveliness  might 
steal  his  strength  and  make  him  the  mere  slave  of  pas- 


THE  STORY    OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         G59 

sion, — he  thrust  the  great  door  backward  heavily,  and 
passed  the  threshold  of  the  chamber. 

She  let  him  go  without  a  word,  a  cry,  a  gesture.  She 
never  changed  her  posture,  but  stood  there,  drawing  her 
costly  gem-sown  robes  together,  as  a  beggar,  perishing 
in  winter  cold,  draws  his  rags  around  his  frozen  limbs. 

Only  once  she  looked  at  him  whom  she  had  wronged — 
at  him  by  whom,  even  yet,  she  had  not  been  forsaken. 

"You  have  your  vengeance,"  she  said,  slowly.  "  It  is 
just." 

He  had  his  vengeance, — the  vengeance  which  the  old 
dead  Loirois  woman  had  foretold, — the  vengeance  which 
broke  his  own  heart  as  it  fell. 

She  stole  backward  with  slow  numbed  movement  to 
the  rude  couch  of  skins,  and  crouched  on  it  once  more. 
She  had  no  memory  of  her  home,  her  rank,  her  house- 
hold, her  dignities  ;  she  had  no  memory  save  for  this  one 
thing, — that  she  was  the  daughter  of  Coriolis.  The  hours 
passed  ;  time  was  nothing  to  them  ;  the  noon  came  ;  she 
still  lay  there,  as  Magdalen  beneath  the  cross;  and  he 
hail  never  stirred  from  where  he  stood  beneath  the  lattice, 
with  his  arms  resting  on  the  wooden  sill,  and  his  head 
bowed  down  upon  them. 

Since  the  sun  had  risen  there  had  been  a  low,  hoarse 
murmur  on  the  air  :  a  sound  like  the  sound  of  the  depths 
of  the  sea.  But  here  it  was  dulled  by  distance,  and  it 
smote  their  ear, — unheard. 

It  was  the  sound  of  conflict: — it  was  the  sound  of  the 
hymn  of  blood. 

Suddenly  it  deepened,  and  came  upon  the  silence  in 
loud  fitful  gusts,  and  pierced  his  lethargy  as  the  war-note 
rouses  the  stupor  of  the  wounded  charger. 

He  heard  t  he  Marseillaise. 

"God  forgive  me!  I  forgot  them  !"  he  cried,  aloud  :  for 
the  only  time  in  all  the  many  years  since  first  he  had 
elected  to  be  one  with  them,  and  make  their  dwelling 
and  their  portion,  their  pleasure  and  their  Buffering,  his, 
he  hail  forgotten  i  he  people. 

"Wait  you  lure,"  he  murmured  In  her.  "It  is  (he 
children  only  who  have  risen.  Ion  t  here  is  danger,  t  hero 
is  slaughter.     (;<>d  forgive  me, — 1  forgot!'' 


660  TR1COTRIN, 

And  he  left  her,  and  went  swiftly  through  the  house, 
that  was  deserted  as  though  pestilence  had  swept  it  bare, 
and  passed  out  into  the  hot  noontide — into  the  streets 
where  the  students  had  risen. 

It  was  a  revolt  of  the  children, — an  outbreak  of  youth's 
noble  madness,  a  passion  of  boys'  futile  frenzy;  but  the 
massacre  of  the  children  had  begun,  and  would  not  cease 
till  the  sun  had  its  setting. 

A  woman,  weeping  and  frantic,  threw  herself  in  his 
passage : 

"  Oh,  friend  !  save  my  son !"  she  cried  to  him.  "  You 
are  as  a  god  to  these  children  !  He  is  all  I  have  upon 
earth, — you  know  !  A  creature  of  seventeen  summers. 
And  he  is  there  at  the  barricades !  Ah  ! — they  die  in 
their  madness,  proud  of  it.  It  were  harder  to  live  for 
mere  duty  1" 

He  put  her  aside  ;  and  went  onward. 

"  God  forgive  me !"  he  said,  still  in  his  heart.  "  I  had 
forgot  them — I  had  forgot  them." 


CHAPTER  LXXV. 

In  one  of  the  streets  of  the  city,  in  one  of  its  white 
and  golden  palaces,  there  was  a  balcony  hung  with  scarlet 
draperies  for  the  festival  that  had  been  a  baptism  of  blood. 

Many  a  time  there  had  come  thither  a  woman,  sunny- 
haired,  laughing,  full  of  gladness,  tossing  sweetmeats  and 
flowers  to  the  crowd,  leaning  there  with  roses  in  her 
breast,  and  her  arms  indolently  folded,  to  watch  the  spec- 
tacle beneath  of  military  pomp,  or  of  imperial  entry,  or 
of  the  masked  fooleries  of  the  idle  carnival  time.  And 
many  a  time  the  passing  multitudes  had  looked  up,  and 
laughed  back  to  her,  and  shouted  their  acclaims,  and 
caught  her  tossed  flower-buds  and  kissed  them  :  for  they 
had  loved  her,  since  she  had  been  clothed  with  the  divinity 
which  this  age  beholds  in  Vice. 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         661 

The  scarlet  folds  hung  stirless  on  the  breeze  ;  the  gilded 
butterflies  upon  them  sparkled  in  the  sun;  the  Eastern 
birds  murmured  merrily;  the  exotics  bloomed  in  every 
hue,  above  in  that  bright  balcony,  while  the  slaughter 
raged  beneath. 

But  on  its  marble  floor  the  woman  lay  lifeless,  with  the 
slow  blood  welling  from  her  breast — a  stray  shot  had 
found  her  where  she  leaned  to  watch  the  pageantry  of 
strife,  and  she  had  fallen  here  among  her  flowers.  Below, 
the  populace  had  paused  one  instant  in  the  tumult  of  their 
passions,  and  had  murmured — 

"It  is  Coriolis— killed  !" 

For  fate  was  still  merciful  to  this  woman,  who  had 
been  merciless  to  all,  still  tender  to  this  spoiler,  who 
knew  not  tenderness,  still  full  of  gifts  to  this  assassin- 
atress,  whose  hands  had  ever  been  outstretched  for  gold. 
It  slew  her  when  fear  had  begun  to  touch  her;  it  slew 
her  when  her  past  sin  rose  against  her;  it  slew  her  ere 
her  beauty  perished,  ere  her  power  waned.  And  Coriolis 
— a  creature  soulless  as  the  butterflies  that  were  her  em- 
blem— had  the  noblest  requiem  that  a  human  soul  can 
have ; — she  had  the  sorrow  of  a  people. 

Verily,  men  are  just. 


CHAPTER    LXXVI. 

In  a  dim,  gray,  ancient  street,  outside  the  passage-way, 
where  I  lie  town  was  still  old,  in  the  heart  of  I  lie  si  lldents, 
win-re  no  cannon  could  sweep  and  no  squadrons  deploy, 
but  each  combat  perforce  was  foutrht  out  hand  to  hand, 
in  the  old  fierce,  fair  fashion, — there  the  first  barricade 
had  been  thrown.  A  barricade  barring  the  entrance;  a 
barricade  that  already  had  served  to  repulse  the  soldiery 
sent  up  against  it.  though  held  only  by  youths, — goaded 
on  by  their  comrades' imprisonment  ;  blind  with  dreams 
of  impossible  worlds;  lashed  to  action  by  agitators  and 
demagogues  ;  beholding  only  the  excellence  of  liberty,  not 

56 


662  TRICOTRIN, 

seeing  the  excellence  of  patience.  Youths  of  all  ages,  all 
tempers  ;  some  gay  with  zest  for  the  devil's  dance  of  a  riot, 
some  grave  with  a  purpose  too  hard  for  their  years ;  some 
drunk  with  their  own  evil  passions,  some  with  pure  longing 
for  freedom  ;  some  the  ignorant  poor  tools  of  conspirators ; 
some  the  ardent  young  prophets  of  truth. 

They  tilled  the  narrow  windings  of  the  street;  they 
climbed  upon  its  roofs,  and  its  ironwork,  and  its  lamp- 
posts;  they  knelt  at  its  windows  with  their  muskets  at 
rest  on  its  ledges;  they  defended  its  stones  as  though 
they  were  the  altar-stones  of  their  holiest  temple.  They 
shouted;  they  sang;  they  dealt  death  and  they  took 
death;  they  fought  shoulder  to  shoulder  ;  they  mounted, 
and  dived,  and  hid,  and  charged  ;  they  swarmed  over  the 
timber  mountain  that  they  had  cast  up  betwixt  them  and 
the  wrorld  ;  they  tasted  blood,  and  were  even  like  young 
hounds  whose  tongues  are  whetted  by  a  dead  deer's  gore. 

And  ever  and  again  as  one  among  them  was  shot  down, 
they  lifted  his  corpse  upon  the  timber  to  raise  the  pile 
higher,  and  sang  more  loudly  their  Marseillaise. 

Above  the  hiss  of  the  bullets,  above  the  cries  of  the 
women,  above  the  roll  of  distant  volleys  as  the  musketry 
sought  their  quarter,  above  the  din  and  the  tumult  of 
carnage,  the  great  chorus  rang  out,  dominant  and  triumph- 
ant: as  it  first  rang  over  the  crowds  of  Paris,  and  over 
the  battle-plains  of  Europe,  while  its  creator  fled  through 
the  mountains,  proscribed,  and  desolate,  and  friendless 
The  chorus  of  the  hymn  that  is  deathless,  because,  while 
men  shall  live,  its  passions,  and  its  woes,  and  its  agony 
of  vain  desires  must  live  also,  unquenched,  unstilled,  and 
unattained, — born  half  of  hell,  born  half  of  heaven. 

Yet  above  even  that  divine  and  devilish  chant  of  the 
nations'  liberties,  his  own  voice  rose  as  he  forced  his  way 
through  amid  them,  and  sprang  up  on  to  their  topmost 
pinnacle  of  the  jammed  mass  of  wood  and  stone.  A 
great  shout  welcomed  him:  — ever  since  the  day  had 
broken,  men  in  the  paroxysms  of  fear,  or  in  the  heat  of 
conflict,  had  asked  of  one  another,  Where  was  he? 

"Ah!  faithless  and  strengthless  !"  he  called  to  them 
"  And  only  a  day  since  you  pledged  me  your  word  to 
keep  peace !  ' 


THE   STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         G63 

They  were  the  people  of  his  own  quarter ;  the  youths 
that  came  round  him  like  dogs  round  their  keeper  ;  only 
a  brief  space  earlier,  he,  who  had  come  to  save  them  if 
they  would  be  saved,  had  spent  the  days  and  the  nights 
among  them  in  their  cellars,  and  clubs,  and  workshops, 
and  painting-rooms,  striving  to  hold  them  back  from  de- 
struction, striving  to  make  them  wait,  for  the  dear  sake 
of  that  liberty  in  whose  name  they  were  mad  for  war. 
And  these, — these  few  at  the  least, — these  two  hundred 
and  more  who  fought  here,  had  listened,  and  given  way, 
and  vowed  to  keep  from  the  snare  spread  for  them  and 
their  kind  by  men  to  whom  rivers  of  blood  were  as  the 
waters  of  Pactolus. 

They  had  promised:  and  thus  they  redeemed  their 
word.  Thus,  with  the  knives  at  their  waist,  and  the  steel 
in  their  hands,  and  the  lust  to  slay  in  their  eyes. 

He  stood  unarmed  in  their  midst;  on  the  highest  place, 
where  the  sun's  rays  came  fullest  and  the  bullets  fell 
fastest.  His  eyes  swept  the  crowd  as  the  eagle's  the 
earth  ;  all  the  warmth,  and  the  light,  and  the  passion  had 
flushed  back  on  his  face  at  the  sight  of  the  gleam  of  the 
steel,  at  the  sound  of  the  anthem  of  revolution. 

On  them  a  sudden  hush  fell — a  sudden  humiliation 
smote. 

They  had  promised  him  peace, — and  at  his  feet  the 
dead  already  lay  three  deep! 

"Could  you  not  be  faithful  one  day  through?"  he 
cried  to  them,  in  the  reproach  which  all  those  who  love 
and  serve  humanity  are  driven  to  cast  against  it.  by  the 
weight  of  its  own  measurelo-  ingratitude.  "  You  prom- 
ised me — you,  my  own  people!  —  and  your  promise  is 
kept  thus!  I  knew  that  you  were  betrayed ;  1  knewthat 
you  were  drawn  down  into  a  pit  ;  I  knew  that  they  left 
your  sting  in  you.  only  that  by  it  you  might  slay  your- 
selves, like  the  scorpion  in  the  flames.  I  warned  you, 
and  you  heard,  and  you  swore  to  keep  in  your  homes  and 
beuntempted.   And  this  is  the  fulfilling  of  your  oath  I " 

Tin'  youths,  pausing,  and  taking  breath,  ami  crowding 
one  on  another  about  the  barricade,  heard  him,  and  were 
ashamed.  One  lad,  the  youngest  of  them  all,  the  child 
of  whom  his  mother  had  spoken,  lifted  his  fair  and  glow- 


664  TRICOTRIN, 

ing  face  with  reverent  love  upon  it,  and  gripped  his  rifle 
closer : 

"It  is  for  liberty!"  he  murmured.  "Have  you  not 
taught  us, — without  it  life  is  worthless  ?" 

The  eyes  of  Tricotrin  rested  on  his  with  infinite  ten- 
derness, infinite  anguish  : 

"I  have  taught  you  that?  No  1  Life  without  it  is 
joyless ;  but  life  without  joy  may  be  great.  The  great- 
ness of  life  is  sacrifice;  is  sacrifice  liberty,  think  you? 
Oh  children,  you  are  blind  and  astray !  You  spend  your 
strength  following  shadows.  This  is  love  of  your  country, 
you  call  it ;  and  heroism,  and  all  things  that  are  noble  ? 
It  is  but  the  froth  of  your  passions,  the  rage  and  the  fret 
of  your  boyhood." 

A  storm  of  hisses  broke  across  his  words.  They  loved 
him,  indeed,  but  in  that  moment  of  exultant  fury,  of  un- 
appeased  bloodthirst,  they  would  not  hearken  even  to 
him.  He  waited,  patiently  and  unmoved,  until  their  fury 
had  in  some  measure  died  out  from  its  own  violence. 

Then  again  he  spoke,  with  a  gesture  that  awed  the 
loudest,  the  fiercest,  the  most  turbulent,  to  silence. 

'You  lift  your  hands  against  me? — you  think  your 
yells  and  your  threats  will  make  me  deal  you  a  dema- 
gogue's flatteries  ?  Pshaw !  men  who  dread  death  scarcely 
come  hither.  All  this  while  have  you  known  me  so 
little  ?  Demagogues,  to  delight  you,  would  lash  on  your 
passions.  I  displease  you  because  I  bid  you  have  pa- 
tience. 

"  To  die,  when  life  can  be  lived  no  longer  with  honor, 
is  greatness  indeed.  But  to  die  because  life  galls,  and 
wearies,  and  is  hard  to  pursue : — there  is  no  greatness  in 
that!  It  is  the  suicide's  plea  for  his  own  self-pity.  You 
live  under  tyranny,  corruption,  dynastic  lies  hard  to  bear, 
despotic  enemies  hard  to  bear — I  know.  But  you  forget, 
what  all  followers  of  your  creed  ever  forget,  that  without 
corruption,  untruth,  weakness,  ignorance,  in  a  nation 
itself,  such  things  could  not  be  in  its  rulers.  Men  can 
bridle  the  ass  and  can  drive  the  sheep,  but  who  can  drive 
the  eagle  or  bridle  the  lion  ?  A  people  that  was  strong 
and  pure,  no  despot  could  yoke  to  his  vices. 

"  Against  the  foreign  foes  of  your  country  die  in  your 


TITE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         665 

youth  if  she  need  it.  But  against  her  internecine  enemies 
live  out  your  life  in  continual  warfare.  When  I  tell  you 
this,  do  you  dream  that  I  spare  you  ?  Children — you 
have  yet  to  learn  what  life  is  !  Who  could  think  it  hard 
to  die  in  the  glory  of  strife,  drunk  with  the  sound  of  the 
combat,  and  feeling  no  pain  in  the  swoon  of  a  triumph  ? 
Few  men  whose  blood  was  hot  and  young  would  ask  a 
greater  ending.  But  to  keep  your  souls  in  patience  ;  to 
strive  unceasingly  with  evil  ;  to  live  in  self-negation,  in 
ceaseless  sacrifices  of  desire;  to  give  strength  to  the 
weak,  and  sight  to  the  blind,  and  light  where  there  is 
darkness,  and  hope  where  there  is  bondage ;  to  do  all 
these  through  many  years  unrecognized  of  men,  content 
only  that  they  are  done  with  such  force  as  lies  within 
you, — this  is  harder  than  to  seek  the  cannons'  mouths, 
this  is  more  bitter  than  to  rush,  with  drawn  steel,  on 
your  tyrants. 

"  Your  women  cry  out  against  you  because  you  leave 
them  to  starve  and  to  weep  while  you  give  your  hearts 
to  revolution  and  your  bodies  to  the  sword.  Their  cry 
is  the  cry  of  selfishness,  of  weakness,  of  narrowness,  the 
cry  of  the  sex  that  sees  uo  sun  save  the  flame  on  its  hearth  : 
yet  there  is  truth  in  it, — a  truth  you  forget.  The  truth, — 
that,  forsaking  the  gold-mine  of  duty  which  lies  at  your 
feet.^ou  grasp  at  the  rainbow  of  glory  ;  that,  neglectful 
of  your  own  secret  sins,  you  fly  at  public  woes  and  at  na- 
tional crimes.  Can  you  not  see  that  if  every  man  took. 
herd  of  the  guilt  of  his  own  thoughts  and  acts,  the  world 
would  be  free  and  at  peace?  It  is  easier  to  rise  with  the 
knife  unsheathed  than  to  keep  watch  and  ward  on  your 
own  passions;  but  do  not  cheat  yourself  into  believing 
that  it  is  nobler,  and  higher,  and  harder.  What  reproach 
is  cast  against  all  revolutionists? — that  the  men  who 
have  nothing  to  lose,  the  men  who  are  reckless  and  out- 
lawed, alone  raise  the  flag  of  revolt.  It  is  a.  satire;  but 
in  every  satin:  there  lies  the  germ  of  a  terrible  fact. 

"You, — you  who  are  children  still,  you  whose  man- 
hood is  still  a  "old  scarcely  touched  in  your  hands,  a  gold 
yon  can  spend  in  all  great  ways,  or  squander  for  all  base 
uses; — you   can   give    the    lie  to  that  public  reproach, 

jii* 


666  TRICOTRIN, 

if  only  you  will  live  in  such  wise  that  your  hands  shall 
be  clean,  and  your  paths  straight,  and  your  honor  un- 
sullied through  all  temptations.  Wait,  and  live  so  that 
the  right  to  judge,  to  rebuke,  to  avenge,  to  purify,  become 
yours  through  your  earning  of  them.  Live  nobly  first ; 
and  then  teach  others  how  to  live. 

"  Lay  down  your  arms — you  have  not  won  the  title 
for  their  usage — lay  them  down,  I  bid  you  ;  and  when 
you  shall  be  able  to  point  to  high  deeds  done  by  you, 
and  high  thoughts  born  from  you,  then  come  forth  so 
armed  again ;  and  none  shall  dare  to  cast  at  you  the  jibe 
that  because  you  knew  not  how  to  live,  therefore,  and 
therefore  only,  you  would  die!" 

They  heard,  and  were  very  still ;  and  paused,  half 
sullen,  half  afraid.  They  knew  that  he  spoke  truth,  but 
that  truth  was  cruel  to  their  pride.  Their  souls  were 
moved  and  disquieted  ;  but  their  self  love  was  stung  into 
rage.  They  could  not  hear  his  voice  without  the  in- 
stinct of  honor  and  obedience,  as  children  hear  the  voice 
of  their  father.  But  they  were  hardened  against  him, 
and  they  murmured  loud  and  deep. 

One  young  boy  alone,  standing  by  his  side, — the  son 
of  the  woman  who  had  besought  him  in  the  street, — lifted 
his  bright,  flushed,  kindling  face. 

"  Do  with  us  as  you  will,"  he  said,  softly — and  he  laid 
down  his  musket,  and  loosened  from  his  breast  the  badge 
of  insurrection.  • 

Tricotrin  smiled  on  him. 

"  That  is  well.  Remember  your  mother  now — in  the 
days  of  your  youth — you  will  not  serve  your  country 
less,  but  more,  when  manhood  conies  to  you." 

The  action  broke  the  spell  of  awe  and  reverence  that 
had  held  entranced  the  throng  around  them :  as  baffled 
hawks,  missing  the  heron,  swoop  on  fieldfares  harmless 
among  the  corn,  so  their  baffled,  stifled  rage  turned  upon 
the  lad. 

"  He  would  forsake  us  !  He  turns  traitor  !"  they  hooted 
against  him,  and  they  rained  the  stones  of  the  streets  at 
the  child.  One — more  drunk  than  all  with  the  passions 
of  the  hour — heaved  up  a  great  block  of  granite,  dis- 
lodged from  the  edge  of  the  pavement,  and  hurled  it 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  667 

hurtling  through  the  air  to  strike  to  earth  the  slender 
figure  of  the  boy. 

The  square  gray  block  sped  on  its  way  as  from  a  cata- 
pult; winged  by  the  force  of  hate. 

Tricotrin  looked  upward  :  he  saw  its  darkness  betwixt 
him  and  the  sun,  he  seized  the  boy  and  drew  him  back- 
ward, backward  into  his  own  place.  The  stone  de- 
scended : — the  boy  stood  erect,  unharmed ;  his  deliverer 
fell  with  the  weight  upon  him. 

The  wail  of  a  people's  agony  broke  from  all  the  multi- 
tude below,  then  hushed  into  a  dead  dread  silence, — the 
silence  of  a  speechless  terror. 

lie  lay  there  with  the  great  stone  upon  his  chest, 
where  it  had  struck  him,  and  had  felled  him  at  a  stroke, 
as  lightning  fells  the  tree.  From  beneath  it  the  blood 
slowly  welled  :  the  bones  of  his  chest  were  crushed  in, 
and  bent,  and  broken. 

The  boy,  for  whom  he  had  thus  met  death,  sank  on  his 
knees,  and  covered  his  eyes  with  his  hands,  and  cried  out 
to  God  to  slay  him  also,  since  through  him  this  martyr- 
dom had  come.  Those  about  him,  youths  likewise,  trem- 
bling, and  weeping,  and  afraid  as  with  the  fear  of  crime, 
thrust  off  the  brutal  weight,  and  raised  him,  and  called  on 
his  name  with  piteous  outcries,  and  forgot  every  other 
thing  on  earth,  save  that  this  man  who  loved  them  had 
died  for  them: — died  thus;  in  the  hour  that  they  had 
revolted  from  him,  and  disobeyed  him,  and  refused  to 
hearken  to  his  voice. 

Then  all  that  breathless  stillness  broke  up  into  an  awful 
tumult: — the  multitude,  mad  with  grief,  and  with  rage, 
and  with  remorse,  flung  themselves  on  his  destroyer,  and 
seized,  and  choked,  and  tore  him  limb  from  limb,  while 
through  the  crowded  quarter  there  rang,  from  mouth  to 
mouth,  the  cry  that  Tricotrin  was  dead. 

On  'he  pile  of  the  barricade  the  noontide  sun  poured 
down.  They  lifted  him  up  on  a  shelf  of  timber,  beneath 
the  drooped  folds  of  their  flag  of  liberty.  His  head  was 
sunk,  his  eyes  were  BightleSS,  the  blond  Welled  slowly 
from  his  breast  : — for  the  firel  time  in  all  his  life  amid 
them  he  gave  no  answer  to  their  prayer,  do  pity  to  their 
anguish. 


668  TRICOTRIN, 

Yet,  even  now,  voiceless,  motionless;  senseless,  he  was 
still  their  deliverer  from  evil;  for,  farther  onward,  as  the 
troops  came  up  to  the  massacre,  to  the  ruthless  mowing 
down  of  all  these  lives  that  were  as  ripe  corn  for  their 
sickles,  the  artillery  were  checked  and  forbidden  to  advance, 
and  dimly  heard  those  in  authority  above  them  murmur 
that  the  people  would  no  more  have  soul  or  strength  for 
combat,  since  Tricotrin  was  dead.  And  the  soldiers  halted, 
afar  off  in  the  noontide  heat,  and  came  no  more  against 
them,  but  left  them  alone  with  their  remorse. 

They  trampled  under  their  feet,  in  the  insanity  of  ven- 
geance, the  body  of  his  murderer ;  and  spat  upon  the 
corpse ;  and  stamped  its  features  into  a  hideous  mass  ; 
and  left  it,  battered  and  shapeless,  in  the  gutter  of  the 
street.  Then,  raving,  weeping,  tearing  their  hair,  shriek- 
ing his  name  aloud,  they  closed  once  more  upon  the  bar- 
ricade. They  were  as  children  whose  father  had  per- 
ished ; — he  had  loved  them  so  well,  death  would  have  no 
power  to  make  him  deaf  to  their  cries,  merciless  to  their 
despair ! 

As  though  their  voices  called  him,  indeed,  back  to  this 
earth  on  which  they  lingered,  desolate  and  bereaved,  his 
consciousness  returned,  his  blindness  passed,  his  eyes 
unclosed  and  rested  on  them.  Each  breath  was  torture, 
each  moment  numbered  ;  but  his  thoughts  were  for  them, 
not  for  himself. 

He  signed  to  those  who  strove  to  rouse  him,  to  let  him  be, 
to  let  him  lie  in  such  peace  as  was  still  left  him.  He  knew 
that  before  the  sun  should  have  declined  from  its  zenith  he 
would  be  no  more  amid  the  world  of  men  ;  no  more  live 
this  life  that  to  him  had  been  ever  so  fair,  and  so  rich, 
and  so  worthy  the  living.  His  bloodless  lips  smiled  still 
as  he  looked  on  them. 

"  Children — do  not  grieve  for  me.  Death  is  gentle  and 
generous.     See!  it  spares  me  sickness  and  age  " 

His  voice  sank ;  each  word  was  a  pang,  as  he  drew 
breath  through  the  lungs  on  which  the  crushed  breast- 
bone pressed  as  with  the  pressure  of  an  iron  vice.  The 
throngs  around  him  only  answered  with  a  great  sob  that 
came  as  from  one  heart.  The  tears  rained  down  their 
cheeks,  they  stretched  their  arms  to  him  as  though  to 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  669 

seize  him  from  the  hold  of  death.  The  women  rent  their 
robes  and  wailed  as  the  women  of  Rome  at  the  tomb  in 
the  Campus  Martins  ;  their  little  children  were  trodden 
under  their  feet  forgotten  ;  from  mouth  to  mouth,  from 
house  to  house,  reaching  those  that  fought  in  distant 
streets,  reaching  those  that  crouched  in  vaults  and  cata- 
combs, this  one  cry  rang — that  they  had  slain  him. 

The  full  sun  was  upon  his  face;  he  looked  upward  at 
its  noonday  glory: — and  the  smile  that  had  come  ever  on 
his  lips  when  he  had  beheld  the  gladness  of  its  rising, 
over  plain,  and  lake,  and  forest,  came  there  still,  in  this, 
his  death-hour. 

"It  is  well,"  he  murmured.  "  Why  will  you  grieve? 
It  is  well.  1  die  at  noon  ; — ere  the  darkness  of  night  sets 
in;  ere  the  night  of  age  overtakes  me.  My  people — if 
you  will  that  I  die  content,  let  my  life  purchase  yours; 
leave  bloodshed,  and  go  in  peace  Shall  it  be  that  you 
will  refuse  me  this,  the  last  thing  that  I  shall  ask  of  you  ?" 

With  the  strength  that  so  long  had  been  in  him,  he 
lifted  himself  on  his  arm,  and  conquered  the  physical 
pangs  that  devoured  him.  His  voice  was  low  and  stifled  ; 
yet  never  in  all  the  hours  of  its  eloquence  had  it  reached 
so  far  to  the  hearts  of  the  people,  had  it  stirred  their  in- 
nermost souls  so  deeply,  as  the  wind  stirs  the  depths  of 
the  ocean. 

"Answer  me  I"  he  cried  to  them,  strong  in  that  moment 
through  the  love  he  bore  them,  and  victorious  over  the 
power  of  death.  "Answer  me!  Will  you  grant  me  this 
because  you  have  killed  me?  Will  you  go  in  peace,  and 
save  your  bodies  from  fruitless  slaughter?  Answer  me, 
if  ever  you  loved  me  !" 

They  were  silent,  pierced  to  the  quick;  then,  still  as 
with  one  mouth,  they  lifted  up  their  voices. 

"  We  say  as  he  said, — do  with  us  as  you  will !" 

A  glory  that  was  greater  than  the  glory  from  the  sun 
shone  in  his  eyes  as  he  heard. 

"  It  is  well,"  he  said,  softly,  once  more.  "Forget  not 
your  word  when  I  lie  dead.'' 

Ami  they  casl  down  their  weapons,  ami  broke  them 
asunder,  and  wept  sorely;  as  children  weep,  refusing  to 
be  comforted,  because  their  hearth  is  cold,  their  bodies 


670  TRTCOTRIN, 

are  famished,  their  hearts  are  desolate,  their  lives  are 
fatherless  and  friendless. 

His  eyes  wandered  dreamily  over  the  crowd,  seeking 
hither  and  thither,  seeking  for  a  face  that  was  not  amid 
them.  Then,  suddenly,  they  rested  on  a  far-off  gloomy 
place,  where,  in  the  shadow  of  an  arch,  one  watcher  stood 
aloof,  and  gazed  upon  the  conflict.  He  stretched  his  hand 
out,  and  pointed  thither. 

"  Bring  him  1"  he  muttered  to  them.  "Bring  him, — 
yonder, — do  you  see?" 

The  throng  surged  closer  together,  then  rolled  asunder, 
and  parted,  and  left  a  passage  free. 

He  whom  he  had  summoned  came,  and  stood,  with  the 
light  on  his  fair,  cold,  weary  face,  against  the  black  piles 
of  the  timber  of  the  barricade,  against  this  death-bed  of 
wood  and  iron  whereon  the  man  who  had  died  for  the 
people  rested  content, — as  on  a  prince's  nuptial  bed. 

Tricotrin,  leaning  still  upon  one  hand,  stretched  out  the 
other  to  him. 

"  Brother, — you  may  know  now.'''' 

Death,  ere  it  laid  the  seal  of  eternal  silence  on  his  lips, 
let  them  breathe  once  more  the  name  that  by  Life  had 
been  forbidden  them. 

And  the  people  drew  back,  and  left  them  alone,  and 

gathered  together,  hushed  and  frightened,  as  dogs  that 

gaze,  helpless,  at  human  passions  and  human  woe,  and 

vaguely  thrill  with  the  despair  and  the  divinity  of  both. 
****** 

The  words  that  passed  their  lips  none  heard.  That 
recognition  in  the  shadow  of  death  none  watched.  The 
people  stood  aloof,  wondering,  and  still  afraid. 

All  that  they  saw  was  the  proud  head  of  the  great  noble 
bent  down  lower,  and  lower,  and  lower  in  reverence  and 
awe  :  all  that  they  heard  was  one  futile  reproach  that 
broke  from  him  and  pierced  the  stillness. 

"  Oh  God  1     Why  have  you  been  lost  to  me  so  long?" 

The  voice  that  answered  him  was  too  faint  to  reach 
their  straining  ears  : 

"  Why  ?  why?  Because  I  loved  my  freedom  ;  because 
I  knew  that  not  one  hour  would  you  have  kept  your 
state  and  station  if  you  once  had  known.     It  was  a  child's 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.         6U 

quixotic  folly — yes;  but  it  never  brought  me  one  regret. 
Let  no  regret  be  with  you.  That  old  Dante — you  had 
forgot  it.  Yet  you  might  have  remembered  ; — it  was  the 
priest's  gift  to  me  for  my  quick  learning  of  the  Latin  that 
he  loved.  Ah  ! — you  recall  the  day  now?  You  believe  ? 
— yes  ;  you  believe.  If  you  doubted,  there  are  papers  in 
the  attic  yonder,  that  would  vouch  to  you.  Is  my  life 
strange  in  your  sight  now  ?  Do  you  see  mystery  in  it, 
or  shame  ?" 

His  brother's  hands  closed  upon  his. 

"  I  dared  to  judge  you  I  I  dared  to  condemn  you  in 
my  pride  and  my  blindness.  Oh  Christ,  if  only  I  had 
known  !" 

He  smiled  ;  the  old  soft  ironic  humor  laughed  still  in 
his  eyes,  even  through  the  mists  that  dimmed  them. 

"Ah!  You  thought  me  astray  in  my  ways  and  my 
creeds,  you  thought  me  a  wanderer  and  a  profitless  idler. 
You  were  right, — from  your  view.  Dignities  have  be- 
fitted you  well:  I  would  not  have  borne  the  burden  and 
heat  of  the  ermine  ;  I  could  not  have  lived  unless  free. 
My  mother  was  sea-born,  you  know,  and  perished, — sti- 
fled under  your  pomp." 

His  listener's  frame  shook  like  a  woman's.  All  the 
chillness  of  long  habit  and  of  social  eminence  was  shat- 
tered in  him  as  a  glacier  shatters  in  its  fall.  The  bitter- 
ness of  this  hour  was  infinite;  and,  by  its  very  force, 
burned  out  that  canker  of  a  too  hard  scorn,  of  a  pride 
too  pitiless  and  too  incredulous,  which  so  long  had  marred 
the  nobility  of  his  temper. 

His  justice,  that  Ik;  had  deemed  so  pure,  had  proved 
but  warped  opinion.  His  vision,  that  he  had  deemed  so 
clear,  had  been  but  purblind  prejudice.  He  scorned  him- 
self; and  was  crushed  under  that  anguish  of  self-reproach 
will)  which  he  surveyed  his  own  fallibility  and  condemned 
his  own  injustice.  And  there  was  no  atonement  possible 
lor  him;  he  learned  all  that  he  had  lost,  all  that  he  had 
misread,  all  that  he  had  missed,  only  in  the  moment  when 
to  learn  them  was  too  late,  only  when  they  passed  away 
from  him  forever. 

•'And  all  these  years  I  have  but  thieved  from  you!'' 
he  muttered.     "All  I  gave  you  when  we  met  were  sus- 


672  TRICOTRIN, 

picion  and  derision  !    One  look — one  accent — should  have 
sufficed  to  me." 

"  Nay — reproach  not  yourself  thus.  What  remorse 
can  there  lie  at  your  door  ?  Yet  if  you  think  that  you 
owe  to  me  aught — pay  it  in  one  fashion." 

"  Demand  of  me  what  you  will  1  Is  not  all  that  I  pos- 
sess your  own  ?" 

"  No !  you  possess  your  will  and  your  pride — those 
are  not  mine  to  bend.     If  you  will  indeed  give  me  what 

I  desire,  vield  me  these " 

"Yield" them?  You  have  killed  them!  Before  your 
life,  how  can  I  see  any  other  thing  save  a  usurper's  fraud 
and  falsehood  in  my  own  ?" 

"  Hush  !  you  were  in  ignorance.  If  you  had  known, 
you  would  have  beggared  yourself  in  an  hour,  sooner 
than  have  continued  to  enjoy.  Give  me  these — your 
passions — nevertheless.  Give  me  them,  and  take  her 
back  to  your  pardon,  to  your  love,  to  your  life.  You  will 
not  ?" 

"  Will  not  ?     I  dare  not  1" 
"  Because  she  is  the  child  of  Coriolis  ?" 
"  Because  she  is  faithless,  and  without  truth." 
"  She  will  be  true  to  you,  and  to  you  faithful.     I  have 
forgiven  ;  shall  not  you  forgive  ?" 

His  brother  was  silent:  his  face  was  hidden  on  his 
hands. 

"  I  have  forgiven,"  he  who  pleaded  for  her  urged  again, 
"  and  what  is  your  wrong  to  mine  ?" 

"  As  she  wronged  you,  so  will  she  wrong  me." 
"  Not  so  :  you  have  her  love.     I  never  had  it  " 
"  That  you  had  not  is  her  guilt?" 
"  No.     She  loves  me  as  a  gay  child  loves — no  more. 
To  you  she  gives  the  love  no  woman  gives  save  once. 
Dying  here,  I  swear  to  you  that  she  has  purity,  and 
honor,  and  a  soul  that  through  you  may  be  lifted  to  all 
high  things.     If  you  heed  not  the  shame  of  her  birth,  no 
other  shame  is  on  her.     In  my  letters  you  will  find  her 
dead  husband's  witness  to  her  perfect  innocence — men, 
dying,  do  not  lie.  She  suffers,  she  is  crushed  under  brutal 
humiliation ;  shall  you  also  strike  her,  now  that  she  is 
prostrate?    Great  God !— how  shall  I  plead  with  you? 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND   STRAY.  673 

You  tell  rne  your  pride  is  broken,  and  you  resist  me  thus  ? 
Look  !  all  her  years  through  I  have  guarded  her  from 
pain,  and  found  her  joy.  Will  you  make  my  life  a  failure 
at  the  last,  because  you  will  condemn  and  put  away  from 
you  this  only  creature  that  I  love?  For  my  sake — not 
for  hers — give  her  your  pardon!  I  have  forgiven, — I! — 
I  tell  you  that  you  shall  not  refuse  to  her  what  I  have 
yielded.  I  tell  you  that  you  shall  not  dare  to  judge  when 
I  already  have  declared  her  sinless!" 

He  lifted  himself  upon  his  arm;  his  voice  l'ose  strong 
and  sonorous;  his  eyes  flashed  with  the  passions  of  other 
days.  He  spoke  no  more  as  a  suppliant ;  he  spoke  as  a 
sovereign  speaks,  against  whom  there  is  no  appeal. 

There  was  a  long  silence. 

Then,  at  last,  his  brother  raised  his  head  and  looked 
at  him  with  one  long,  weary,  reverent  gaze. 

"  For  your  sake  be  it,"  he  muttered,  while  his  proud 
lips  trembled.     "I  believe — I  will  strive  also  to  forgive." 

Tricotrin  smiled:  the  smile  of  one  victorious,  but  whose 
victory  is  wrested  from  the  grave. 

"You  have  paid  me  all  your  debt.  Be  merciful  to  her; 
keep  her  in  gladness  and  in  honor.  This  legacy  1  leave 
you — Viva's  life." 

His  head  fell  back,  his  lungs  bled  inwardly,  exhaustion 
overcame  him ;  and  through  the  throngs  a  loud  wail  went, 
and  echoed  once  again  through  all  the  passage-ways,  and 
over  the  close-standing  roofs;  till  its  reverberation  shook 
all  silent  inmost  places  into  sound,  and  startled  sleeping 
infants  in  their  cradles,  and  awakened  old  and  helpless 
men  from  their  shivering  lethargy  by  their  dull  hearths. 

There  were  movemenl  and  agitation  in  the  crowd  be- 
low; through  them  there  forced  her  way,  in  blind,  fierce 
passage,  the  lofty,  slender  form  of  a  woman,  who  lieu- 
wit  h  swift  sure  feet  up  the  Bide  of  the  barricade,  and 
came,  and  threw  herself  beside  him  where  he  lav.  She 
saw  no  other  face  than  his  in  that  burning  glow  of  sun- 
light; she  heard  no  other  sound  in  all  thai  tempest  of 
emotion,  save  the  cry  that   he  was  dead. 

"1  am  too  late!  too  late  again — my  God!"  .-he  cried, 
in  her  delirium.  "Oh  people  of  Paris! — have  you  no 
shot,  no  steel   for  me?     What  was  1  once  among  you! — 

57 


674  TRICOTRIN, 

a  stray  and  homeless  thing,  fed  on  his  alms,  saved  by  his 
mercy,  reared  in  honor  and  in  innocence  through  him 
alone.  And  I  forsook  him,  I  denied  him,  I  was  ashamed 
of  my  debt,  I  was  apostate  to  his  love.  Kill  me  with 
him  if  you  have  pity  in  you.  I  am  viler  than  the  vilest 
in  your  streets  1" 

In  her  madness,  the  truth  seemed  to  her  all  the  atone- 
ment that  was  left;  in  her  remorse,  the  vengeance  that 
she  forced  upon  herself  was  wider,  deeper,  more  cruel, 
than  any  vengeance  that  men  take  on  guilt.  There  was 
a  terrible  justice  in  her  expiation: — to  the  people  whom 
she  had  scorned  with  all  the  gay  scorn  of  her  proud  life, 
from  the  childish  days  when  she  had  trodden  on  her  vine- 
crown,  her  confession  and  her  humiliation  were  now  ren- 
dered. 

To  the  multitude  the  words  bore  no  meaning;  and  her 
voice  was  drowned  in  the  moan  of  their  own  lamentation, 
that  was  loud  as  the  moan  of  the  sea.  But  he  heard,  and 
his  eyelids  unclosed,  and  his  gaze  dwelt  on  her  in  that 
speechless  and  immeasurable  love  of  which  never  in  one 
hour  of  her  life  had  she  once  been  worthy — until  now. 

"  Viva  mine,"  be  murmured,  in  the  old,  sweet,  familiar 
phrase  of  other  days,  "thou  dost  wrong  to  thyself. 
Thy  sins  have  been  but  a  woman's  foibles.  I  forgave 
them  long  ago.  Truth  is  with  thee  now,  let  it  abide  with 
thee  forever.  Where  truth  is  not,  how  shall  there  be 
peace?  In  his  love  thou  wilt  have  no  need  of  mine. 
Have  no  memory  of  my  life  save  such  as  may  be  glad  to 
thee.  I  made  thy  happiness — once.  Remember  only 
that.  I  die  content.  I  have  saved  all  these  from  slaugh- 
ter,— these  children, — they  may  yet  be  great  men,  and 
free.  Life  has  been  sweet, — ah,  God! — but  death  is  wel- 
come. Stoop  down  and  kiss  me  once — once — it  will  leave 
no  shame  on  thy  lips  for  him." 

For  awhile  he  rested,  motionless,  breathless,  with  his 
eyes  blind  to  the  light,  and  his  ear  hearing  no  more  the 
wail  of  the  anguish  beneath  him. 

Then  suddenly  he  raised  himself  erect,  and  looked  upon 
the  great,  still  crowd  below,  and  upward  at  the  summer 
skies. 

Earth  had  been  ever  so  fair  to  him,  and  men  so  well-be- 


THE  STORY  OF  A    WAIF  AND  STRAY.         6T5 

loved :  and  never  again  would  his  sight  behold  the  green- 
ness of  the  summer  world,  or  the  faces  of  his  brethren. 

"  Let  my  death  be  the  ransom  of  your  lives,"  he  cried  to 
them,  while  all  the  strength  and  sweetness  of  his  voice 
returned,  and  rang  over  the  stricken  multitude.  "Keep 
my  memory  in  your  hearts  a  little  while.  If  it  come  ever 
between  you  and  any  guilt,  I  shall  not  have  lived  my  life 
in  vain.  You  suffer  for  me  now  ? — ah  !  how  soon  will 
you  forget?  Stand  back,  and  let  me  see  the  sun  once 
more — once  more:  it  is  the  smile  of  God." 

And,  looking  upward  to  the  last,  he  died. 

Over  the  whole  city  a  great  silence  fell ;  and  with  that 
hour  the  slaughter  ceased.  Even  as  he  had  loved  them 
in  his  life,  so  in  his  death  he  saved  them. 

And  the  people  mourned,  refusing  to  be  comforted. 


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A  Baptist  Novel.  By  Mrs.  M.  Jeanie  Mallary.  12mo.  Tinted 
paper.     Fine  cloth,  beveled  boards.     $1.50. 

"The  work  cannot  fail  of  a  large  circulation,  especially  among 
Baptists,  who  will  find  it  one  of  the  most  useful  missionaries  they 
can  employ." — Albany  Evening  Journal. 

Ante  Be  Hum. 

Southern  Life  as  it  Was.  By  Mart  Lennox.  12mo.  Cloth. 
$2.00. 

"We  consider  it  a  decided  success,  and  have  read  it  fully 
impressed  with  the  belief  that  the  brilliant  and  accomplished 
authoress  is  not  destined  long  to  remain  unknown  to  fame." — 
Columbus  (Ga.)  Enquirer. 

John  Ward's  Governess. 

By  Annie  L.  Macgregor.     12mo.     Fine  cloth.     $1.75. 

"The  story  is  so  very  gracefully  and  simply  told  that  we  hope 
it  will  not  be  the  author's  last  as  well  as  first  work." — Philadelphia 
Press. 

Daisy. 

A  Novel.  By  the  author  of  "The  Wide,  Wide  World,' 
"Queechy,"  etc.      12mo.     Cloth.     $2.00. 

For  sale  by  all  Booksellers,  or  will  be  sent  by  mail,  postage  free 
on  receipt  of  price  by  the  Publishers. 


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